ming acquainted, I might almost say. Because
really we are perfect strangers. And when one has shot a man, even by
accident...." Her ladyship did not finish, but went on to hope the
eyesight was recovering.

"Oh yes!" said Irene audaciously. "We are quite hopeful about it now. It
will be all right with rest and feeding up. Only, if I let you in to see
him you _will_ promise me, won't you--not to say a word about his eyes?
It only frightens him, and does no one any good." Of course, Miss
Torrens got her promise. It was an easy one to make, because reference
to the eyes only seemed a means towards embarrassment. Much easier to
say nothing about them. Gwen and Miss Torrens, very _liees_ already,
went out by the garden window to talk, but would keep within hearing
because breakfast was imminent.

More guests, and the newspapers; as great an event in the early fifties
as now, but with only a fraction of the twentieth century's allowance of
news. Old General Rawnsley, guilty of his usual rudeness in capturing
the _Times_ from all comers, had to surrender it to the Hon. Percival
because none but a dog-in-the-manger could read a letter from Sir C.
Napier of Scinde, and about Dr. Livingstone and Sekeletu and the
Leeambye all at the same time. All comers, or several male comers at
least, essayed to pinion the successful captor of the _Times_, thirsting
for information about their own special subjects of interest. No--the
Hon. Percival did _not_ see anything, so far, about the new Arctic
expedition that was to unearth, or dis-ice, the _Erebus_ and _Terror_;
but the inquirer, a vague young man, shall have the paper directly.
Neither has he come on anything, as yet, about a mutiny in the camp at
Chobham. But the paper shall be at the disposal of this inquirer, too,
as soon as the eye in possession has been run down to the bottom of this
column. In due course both inquirers get hold of corners at the moment
of surrender, and then have paroxysms of polite concession which neither
means in earnest, during which the bone of contention becomes the prey
of a passing wolf. Less poetically, someone else gets hold of the paper
and keeps it.

The Hon. Percival really surrendered the paper, not because his interest
in Lord Palmerston's speech had flagged, but because he had heard Miss
Dickenson come in, and that consideration about her endurance of the
daylight weighed upon him. On the whole, she is standing the glare of
day better than he