represented a side of
her character which was quite as real as the other.

In like manner, no one who knew of her only as a "wild visionary" could
have realised the shrewd, practical woman of business and of
common-sense who shared the personality of Countess of Caithness and
Duchesse de Pomar.

I remember that Mr Frederic Myers made the same remark to me after a
visit he paid to her, just after my return to England, for the purpose
of arranging matters with regard to her generous bequest to the Society
for Psychical Research.

CHAPTER VIII

FROM OXFORD TO WIMBLEDON

From Paris to England is not a long cry, and my next reminiscence is
connected with the University of Oxford.

I was spending a few days there with a friend in the spring of 1896,
and went with her one afternoon to an Oxford tea-party, with its usual
sprinkling of women, married and unmarried; a few dons captured as a
question of friendship, and more than a few undergraduates.

Amongst the latter I chanced to hear the name of a very well-known
bishop, whom I had first met and known rather intimately when I was a
young girl, and he a young married curate. I had also known his wife
(a few years my senior) very intimately in those far-off days, so my
curiosity was aroused to know if the young man in this Oxford
drawing-room should chance to be a son of this bishop, whom we will
call the Bishop of Granchester. I found that my surmise was correct;
the young man was introduced to me, and we were soon deep in an
interesting conversation about his parents, especially his mother, who
had died when he was barely three years old. He knew little or nothing
about her. His father had married again, and his paternal grandmother
(still alive in 1896) had never cared for his mother--from feelings
of jealousy probably--so there was no one to speak to the boy about
her, and he was naturally delighted to hear all my girlish
recollections of her.

"Do come and have tea with me to-morrow afternoon, or any day that suits
you," he said eagerly. "I have one or two old photographs taken of my
mother when she was young, and I should like so much to know which of
them you consider the best."

Of course, I agreed to go, Mr Blake-Mason promising to ask a "chum" to
entertain my hostess whilst he and I discussed the photographs and the
old days before he was born.

Returning home from his rooms that February evening, I was conscious
once more of an unaccountable depr