her a
pity!

Miss Dickenson could identify a glow-worm and correct the ascription of
its light to any fellow's cigar-end thrown away. She made the best
figure that was compatible with being indubitably _passee_ when she went
down on one knee in connection with this identification. Mr. Pellew felt
rather relieved. Her outlines seemed somehow to warrant or confirm the
intelligence he had pledged himself to. He remarked, without knowing
anything about it, that he thought glow-worms didn't show up till
September.

"Try again, Mr. Pellew. It's partridge-shooting that doesn't begin till
September. That's what you're thinking of."

"Well--August, then!"

"No--that's grouse, not glow-worms. You see, you are reduced to July,
and it's July still. Do take my advice, Mr. Pellew, and leave Natural
History alone. Nobody will ever know you know nothing about it, if you
hold your tongue."

The Hon. Percival was silent. He was not thinking about his shortcomings
as a Natural Historian. The reflection in his mind was:--"What a pity
this woman isn't twenty years younger!" He could discriminate--so he
imagined--between mere flippancy and spontaneous humour. The latter
would have sat so well on the girl in her teens, and he would then have
accepted the former as juvenile impertinence with so much less misgiving
that he was being successfully made game of. He could not quite shake
free of that suspicion. Anyhow, it was a pity Miss Smith-Dickenson was
thirty-seven. That was the age her friend Lady Ancester had assessed her
at, in private conversation with Mr. Pellew. "Though what the deuce my
cousin Philippa"--thus ran a very rapid thought through his mind--"could
think I wanted to know the young woman's age for, I can't imagine."

"There it is!" said the lady, stooping over the glow-worm. "Little hairy
thing! I won't disturb it." She got on her feet again, saying:--"Thank
you--I'm all right!" in requital of a slight excursion towards
unnecessary help, which took the form of a jerk cut short and an
apologetic tone. "But don't talk Zoology or Botany, please," she
continued. "Because there's something I want you to tell me about."

"Anything consistent with previous engagements. Can't break any
promises."

"Have you made any promises about the man upstairs?"

"Not the ghost of a one! But he isn't 'the man upstairs' to me. He's the
man in the room at the end of my passage. That's how I came to see him."

"You did see him?"

"Oh ye