This party was already assembled when I arrived upon the spot appointed.  In the street, a few paces from the church, stood Bohm and Charley and Kitty and Gazza, with Beverly Rodgers, who, as I came near, left them and joined me.

“Oh, she’s somewhere off with her fire-eater,” responded Beverly to my immediate inquiry for Hortense.  “Do you think she was asked, old man?”

Probably not, I thought.  “But she goes so well with the rest,” I suggested.

Beverly gave his chuckle.  “She goes where she likes.  She’ll meet us here when we’re finished, I’m pretty sure.”

“Why such certainty?”

“Well, she has to attend to Charley, you know!”

Mrs. Weguelin, it appeared, had met the party here by the church, but had now gone somewhere in the immediate neighborhood to find out why the gate was not opened to admit us, and to hasten the unpunctual custodian of the keys.  I had not looked for precisely such a party as Mrs. Weguelin’s invitation had gathered, nor could I imagine that she had fully understood herself what she was gathering; and this I intimated to Beverly Rodgers, saying:—­

“Do you suppose, my friend, that she suspected the feather of the birds you flock with?”

Beverly took it lightly.  “Hang it, old boy, of course everybody can’t be as nice as I am!” But he took it less lightly before it was over.

We stood chatting apart, he and I, while Bohm and Charley and Kitty and Gazza walked across the street to the window of a shop, where old furniture was for sale at a high price; and it grew clearer to me what Beverly had innocently brought upon Mrs. Weguelin, and how he had brought it.  The little quiet, particular lady had been pleased with his visit, and pleased with him.  His good manners, his good appearance, his good English-trained voice, all these things must have been extremely to her taste; and then—­more important than they—­did she not know about his people?  She had inquired, he told me, with interest about two of his uncles, whom she had last seen in 1858.  “She’s awfully the right sort,” said Beverly.  Yes, I saw well how that visit must have gone:  the gentle old lady reviving in Beverly’s presence, and for the sake of being civil to him, some memories of her girlhood, some meetings with those uncles, some dances with them; and generally shedding from her talk and manner the charm of some sweet old melody—­and Beverly, the facile, the appreciative, sitting there with her at a correct, deferential angle on his chair, admirably sympathetic and in good form, and playing the old school. (He had no thought to deceive her; the old school was his by right, and genuinely in his blood, he took to it like a duck to the water.) How should Mrs. Weguelin divine that he also took to the nouveau jeu to the tune of Bohm and Charley and Kitty and Gazza?  And so, to show him some attention, and because she couldn’t ask him to a meal, why, she would take him over the old church, her colonial forefathers’; she would tell him the little legends about them; he was precisely the young man to appreciate such things—­and she would be pleased if he would also bring the friends with whom he was travelling.