r meeting you somewhere, and I remember you asking me to come and
lunch with you here, and that I accepted your kind invitation. Beyond
that my mind is a positive blank."

The scared look was transferred with intensified poignancy to the faces
of her companions.

"_You_ asked _us_ to lunch," they exclaimed hurriedly. That seemed a
more immediately important point to clear up than the question of
identity.

"Oh, no," said the vanishing hostess, "_that_ I do remember about. You
insisted on my coming here because the feeding was so good, and I must
say it comes up to all you said about it. A very nice lunch it's been.
What I'm worrying about is who on earth am I? I haven't the faintest
notion?"

"You are Lady Drakmanton," exclaimed the three sisters in chorus.

"Now, don't make fun of me," she replied, crossly, "I happen to know her
quite well by sight, and she isn't a bit like me. And it's an odd thing
you should have mentioned her, for it so happens she's just come into the
room. That lady in black, with the yellow plume in her hat, there over
by the door."

The Smithly-Dubbs looked in the indicated direction, and the uneasiness
in their eyes deepened into horror. In outward appearance the lady who
had just entered the room certainly came rather nearer to their
recollection of their Member's wife than the individual who was sitting
at table with them.

"Who _are_ you, then, if that is Lady Drakmanton?" they asked in panic-
stricken bewilderment.

"That is just what I don't know," was the answer; "and you don't seem to
know much better than I do."

"You came up to us in the club--"

"In what club?"

"The New Didactic, in Calais Street."

"The New Didactic!" exclaimed Lady Drakmanton with an air of returning
illumination; "thank you so much. Of course, I remember now who I am.
I'm Ellen Niggle, of the Ladies' Brasspolishing Guild. The Club employs
me to come now and then and see to the polishing of the brass fittings.
That's how I came to know Lady Drakmanton by sight; she's very often in
the Club. And you are the ladies who so kindly asked me out to lunch.
Funny how it should all have slipped my memory, all of a sudden. The
unaccustomed good food and wine must have been too much for me; for the
moment I really couldn't call to mind who I was. Good gracious," she
broke off suddenly, "it's ten past two; I should be at a polishing job in
Whitehall. I must scuttle off like a giddy rabbit. Thanki