st too
abrupt a production of family history by a family friend. Mr. Pellew
felt confident it would come, though; and it did, at about the third
whiff of the new cigar.

"I suppose you know the story?"

"Couldn't say, without hearing it first to know."

"About Philippa and Sir Hamilton Torrens?"

"Can't say I have. But then I'm the sort of fellah nobody ever tells
things to."

"I suppose I oughtn't to have mentioned it."

"I shall not tell anyone you did so. You may rely on that." Mr. Pellew
gave his cigar a half-holiday to say this seriously, and Miss Dickenson
felt that his type, though too tailor-made, was always to be relied on;
you had only to scratch it to find a Gentleman underneath. No audience
ever fails to applaud the discovery on the stage. Evidently there was no
reserve needed--a relation of the Earl, too! Still, she felt satisfied
at this passing recognition of Prudence on her part. Preliminaries had
been done justice to.

She proceeded to tell what she knew of the episode of her friend's early
engagement to the father of the gentleman who had been shot. It was
really a very flat story; so like a thousand others of its sort as
scarcely to claim narration-space. Youth, beauty, high spirits, the
London season, first love--warranted the genuine article--parental
opposition to the union of Romeo and Juliet, on the vulgar, unpoetical
ground of Romeo having no particular income and vague expectations; the
natural impatience of eighteen and five-and-twenty when they don't get
their own way in everything; misunderstandings, ups-and-downs,
reconciliations and new misunderstandings; finally one rather more
serious than its predecessors, and judicious non-interference of
bystanders--underhanded bystanders who were secretly favouring another
suitor, who wasn't so handsome and showy as Romeo certainly, but who was
of sterling worth and all that sort of thing. Besides, he was very
nearly an Earl, and Hamilton Torrens was three-doors off his father's
Baronetcy and Pensham Steynes. This may have had its weight with Juliet.
Miss Dickenson candidly admitted that she herself would have been
influenced; but then, no doubt she was a worldling. Mr. Pellew admired
the candour, discerning in it exaggeration to avoid any suspicion of
false pretence. He did not suspect himself of any undue leniency to this
lady. She was altogether too _passee_ to admit of any such idea.

The upshot of the flat episode, of course, was that