All London was new to Lily Dale, and Mrs Thorne was very anxious to show her everything that could be seen.  She was to return to Allington before the flowers of May would have come, and the crowd and the glare and the fashion and the art of the Academy’s great exhibition must therefore remain unknown to her; but she was taken to see many pictures, and among others she was taken to see the pictures belonging to a certain nobleman who, with that munificence which is so amply enjoyed and so little recognised in England, keeps open house for the world to see the treasures which the wealth of his family had collected.  The necessary order was procured, and on a certain brilliant April afternoon, Mrs Thorne and her party found themselves in this nobleman’s drawing-room.  Lily was with her, of course, and Emily Dunstable was there, and Bernard Dale, and Mrs Thorne’s dear friend Mrs Harold Smith, and Mrs Thorne’s constant and useful attendant, Siph Dunn.  They had nearly completed their delightful but wearying task of gazing at pictures, and Mrs Harold Smith had declared that she would not look at another painting till the exhibition was open; three of the ladies were seated in the drawing-room, and Siph Dunn was standing before them, lecturing about art as though he had been brought up on the ancient masters; Emily and Bernard were lingering behind, and the others were simply delaying their departure till the truant lovers should have caught them.  At this moment two gentlemen entered the room from the gallery, and the two gentlemen were Fowler Pratt and Adolphus Crosbie.

All the party except Mrs Thorne knew Crosbie personally, and all of them except Mrs Harold Smith knew something of the story of what had occurred between Crosbie and Lily.  Siph Dunn had learned it all since the meeting in the park, having nearly learned it all from what he had seen with there with his eyes.  But Mrs Thorne, who knew Lily’s story, did not know Crosbie’s appearance.  But there was his friend Fowler Pratt, who, as will be remembered, had dined with her but the other day; and she, with that outspoken and somewhat loud impulse which was natural to her, addressed him at once across the room, calling him by name.  Had she not done so, the two men might probably have escaped through the room, in which case they would have met Bernard Dale and Emily Dunstable in the doorway.  Fowler Pratt would have endeavoured so to escape, and to carry Crosbie with him, as he was quite alive to the experience of saving Lily from such a meeting.  But, as things turned out, escape from Mrs Thorne was impossible.

‘There’s Fowler Pratt,’ she had said when they first entered, quite loud enough for Fowler Pratt to hear her.  ’Mr Pratt, come here.  How d’ye do?  You dined with me last Tuesday, and you’ve never been to call.’

‘I never recognise that obligation till after the middle of May,’ said Mr Pratt, shaking hands with Mrs Thorne and Mrs Smith, and bowing to Miss Dale.