of the gallery, where it was discussed with
several members of the party; even when, after they had all gone out
together, he found himself for half an hour conjoined with Mrs. St.
George. Her husband had taken the advance with Miss Fancourt, and this
pair were quite out of sight. It was the prettiest of rambles for a
summer afternoon--a grassy circuit, of immense extent, skirting the limit
of the park within. The park was completely surrounded by its old
mottled but perfect red wall, which, all the way on their left,
constituted in itself an object of interest. Mrs. St. George mentioned
to him the surprising number of acres thus enclosed, together with
numerous other facts relating to the property and the family, and the
family's other properties: she couldn't too strongly urge on him the
importance of seeing their other houses. She ran over the names of these
and rang the changes on them with the facility of practice, making them
appear an almost endless list. She had received Paul Overt very amiably
on his breaking ground with her by the mention of his joy in having just
made her husband's acquaintance, and struck him as so alert and so
accommodating a little woman that he was rather ashamed of his _mot_
about her to Miss Fancourt; though he reflected that a hundred other
people, on a hundred occasions, would have been sure to make it. He got
on with Ms. St. George, in short, better than he expected; but this
didn't prevent her suddenly becoming aware that she was faint with
fatigue and must take her way back to the house by the shortest cut. She
professed that she hadn't the strength of a kitten and was a miserable
wreck; a character he had been too preoccupied to discern in her while he
wondered in what sense she could be held to have been the making of her
husband. He had arrived at a glimmering of the answer when she announced
that she must leave him, though this perception was of course
provisional. While he was in the very act of placing himself at her
disposal for the return the situation underwent a change; Lord Masham had
suddenly turned up, coming back to them, overtaking them, emerging from
the shrubbery--Overt could scarcely have said how he appeared--and Mrs.
St. George had protested that she wanted to be left alone and not to
break up the party. A moment later she was walking off with Lord Masham.
Our friend fell back and joined Lady Watermouth, to whom he presently
mentioned that Mrs. St. Geor