g about you now."

"Then come and walk about and I'll tell you. Then we shall be ready
for a waltz. Do you waltz well?"

"Do you?"

"I'll back myself against any Englishman, Frenchman, German, or
Italian, for a large sum of money. I can't come quite up to the
Poles. The fact is, the honester the man is the worse he always
dances. Yes; I see what you mean. I must be a rogue. Perhaps I
am;--perhaps I'm only an exception. I knew your father."

"Papa!"

"Yes, I did. He was down at Stalham with the Alburys once. That was
five years ago, and he told me he had a daughter named Ayala. I
didn't quite believe him."

"Why not?"

"It is such an out-of-the-way name."

"It's as good as Jonathan, at any rate." And Ayala again nodded her
head.

"There's a prejudice about Jonathan, as there is about Jacob and
Jonah. I never could quite tell why. I was going to marry a girl once
with a hundred thousand pounds, and she wouldn't have me at last
because she couldn't bring her lips to say Jonathan. Do you think she
was right?"

"Did she love you?" said Ayala, looking up into his face.

"Awfully! But she couldn't bear the name; so within three months
she gave herself and all her money to Mr. Montgomery Talbot de
Montpellier. He got drunk, and threw her out of the window before a
month was over. That's what comes of going in for sweet names."

"I don't believe a word of it," said Ayala.

"Very well. Didn't Septimus Traffick marry your cousin?"

"Of course he did, about a month ago."

"He is another friend of mine. Why didn't you go to your cousin's
marriage?"

"There were reasons," said Ayala.

"I know all about it," said the Colonel. "You quarreled with Augusta
down in Scotland, and you don't like poor Traffick because he has got
a bald head."

"I believe you're a conjuror," said Ayala.

"And then your cousin was jealous because you went to the top of St.
Peter's, and because you would walk with Mr. Traffick on the Pincian.
I was in Rome, and saw all about it."

"I won't have anything more to do with you," said Ayala.

"And then you quarreled with one set of uncles and aunts, and now you
live with another."

"Your aunt told you that."

"And I know your cousin, Tom Tringle."

"You know Tom?" asked Ayala.

"Yes; he was ever so good to me in Rome about a horse; I like Tom
Tringle in spite of his chains. Don't you think, upon the whole, if
that young lady had put up with Jonathan she would have done better
tha