ask you to accept my strong anxiety on this
matter as some excuse."

Lady Popham waved her hand with a courteous
gesture, implying that no excuse was needed.
And Clement went on rapidly.

"The day before yesterday Miss O'Brien
received a letter from your ladyship."

"No doubt she did. I wrote her a long
letter, after having neglected her for some
time."

"A portion of that letter Miss O'Brien read
aloud at our luncheon-table."

A faint colour—called up, perhaps, by some
recollection of the "bricks-and-mortar people,"
and sundry similar phrases—flushed Lady
Popham's withered cheek. But she said nothing,
and merely eyed Clement curiously.

"Amongst other matters, mention was made
of a very dear friend of mine. One whose
welfare I am bound to care for, as far as I am able.
And the mention of that friend was such as to
distress me a good deal."

"Really? I am very sorry," murmured
Lady Popham, looking steadily at Clement
through her glass.

"From all I have heard of you from your
god-daughter, Lady Popham, I was emboldened
to hope that under the circumstances of the
case, you would overlook the conventional
impropriety of my taking the step I have taken,
and coming to speak to you in person."

Her ladyship nodded approvingly. "I'm
very glad," she said, "that Geraldine knows
me so well."

"To be brief, then," continued Clement,
"you have shown some kindness to a young
violinist named Alfred Trescott——"

"Alfred Trescott!" said the little woman,
jumping up and clapping her hands
enthusiastically. "Oh, he is the divinest creature!
And has a genius for music, comme il y en a
peu. And is he really a dear friend of yours?
I am so charmed! But what could possibly
have distressed you in my mention of him?"

"No, no," said Clement, almost savagely,
"he is no friend of mine, Lady Popham. And,
in truth, I have no reason to think well of him
in any way. But you spoke also of a young
a–a–actress."

He brought out the word with a jerk, and as
if its very utterance were painful to him.

"Oh, to be sure, Miss Bell. She went to
Dublin a fortnight ago at the close of the
season. A very charming, interesting girl. Is she
your very dear friend, Mr. Charlewood?"

Clement coloured deeply, but answered at
once, in a firm voice: "Yes, Lady Popham,
that young lady, whom you call Miss Bell, is a
very dear and valued friend of mine. I know
and esteem her mother—who is, I assure you,
an excellent person, and a thorough
gentlewoman—and I have been placed by—by
circumstances in a position with regard to them
both, that warrants my asking you in confidence
if there is any solid foundation for the
insinuation you jestingly threw out with regard
to Mr. Alfred Trescott and—this young lady."

"Now, really, really, my dear Mr. Charlewood,"
said her ladyship, tapping his arm playfully
with the handle of a large green fan that
lay beside her, "I begin to be afraid that you
have some intention of troubling that course of
true love which is said never yet to have run
smooth!"

"Good Heavens! Lady Popham, you don't
mean to say——"

"Oh, Dio guardi! I don't mean to say anything
about the lady—that is to say, I have no
right to do so. None in the world. But, I
dare say, my young Orpheus—who is positively
enchanting—wouldn't mind my admitting on
his part that he is over head and ears in love
with Miss Bell. And small blame to him, as
they say here."

"But she—you don't believe for a moment
that she thinks of him?"

Clement's forehead was knotted into an
expression of intense suffering, and he was
evidently struggling hard to master some violent
emotion.

But Lady Popham, who thoroughly enjoyed
the romance she had conjured up, went on
rapturously to praise Miss Bell's beauty, and
talent, and grace, and Alfred Trescott's
picturesque appearance and musical genius, and
to exclaim sentimentally what a charming
couple they would make, until Clement was
nearly beside himself.

"Lady Popham," he cried, desperately, "if
you could only know, as I do, the real character
of this young man, you would shrink with
horror from the idea of encouraging such an
alliance for one moment."

"I beg you to understand, Mr. Clement
Charlewood," said the old lady, drawing
herself up, "that you are very much mistaken
when you do me the honour to suppose that I
have been instrumental in 'encouraging,' as you
call it, anything of the kind."

"I sincerely beg your pardon if I have said
anything offensive, but this matter touches me
so nearly that I cannot stay to choose my words.
I tell you, Lady Popham, that this young
Trescott is selfish, idle, unprincipled, and a
gambler. His associates and his habits are low,
and vile, and vulgar. A union between such a
fellow as I know this young man to be, and the
lady we are speaking of, would be in every
respect a wretched and most ill-assorted union."

Lady Popham tapped her foot impatiently
on the ground. She was terribly annoyed.
Her ladyship had been so long accustomed to
give free scope to all her whims and fancies,
and had plunged headlong into so violent an
infatuation for her new protégé boasting—of his
talents to all her acquaintance—that to be told
in this rough blunt way that the young man
whom she had admired and petted and received
into her house was "low, and vile, and vulgar,"
was quite intolerable.

"Really, Mr. Charlewood," she said, sharply,
"you are making very serious and disgraceful
accusations against my young friend. You
know best what your motive may be for so