“Yes, I am grateful to the accident that has given me the opportunity of judging for myself,” quoth Lord Erymanth, and with a magnanimity which I was then too inexperienced to perceive, he added, “I can better estimate the motives which made you decide on fixing your residence with your nephews, and I have no reluctance in declaring them natural and praiseworthy.”  I showed my satisfaction in my old friend’s forgiveness, but he still went on:  “Still, my dear, you must allow me to represent that your residence here, though it is self-innocent, exposes you to unpleasant complications.  I cannot think it well that a young lady of your age should live entirely with two youths without female society, and be constantly associating with such friends as they may collect round them.”

I remember now how the unshed tears burnt in my eyes as I said the female society had left me to myself, and begged to know with whom I had associated.  In return I heard something that filled me with indignation about his nephew, Dermot Tracy, not being exactly the companion for an unchaperoned young lady, far less his sporting friends, or that young man who had been Dr. Kingston’s partner.  He was very sorry for me, as he saw my cheeks flaming, but he felt it right that I should be aware.  I told him how I had guarded myself—­ never once come across the sportsmen, and only seen Mr. Yolland professionally when he showed me how to dress Harold’s hand, besides the time when he went over the pottery with us.  Nay, Dermot himself had only twice come into my company—­once about his sister, and once to inquire after Harold after the adventure with the lion.

There I found I had alluded to what made Lord Erymanth doubly convinced that I must be blinded; my sight must be amiably obscured, as to the unfitness—­he might say, the impropriety of such companions for me.  He regretted all the more where his nephew was concerned, but it was due to me to warn, to admonish, me of the true facts of the case.

I did not see how I could want any admonition of the true facts I had seen with my own eyes.

He was intensely astonished, and did not know how to believe that I had actually seen the lion overpowered; whereupon I begged to know what he had heard.  He was very unwilling to tell me, but it came out at last that Dermot and Harold—­being, he feared, in an improperly excited condition—­had insisted on going to the den with the keeper, and had irritated the animal by wanton mischief, and he was convinced that this could not have taken place in my presence.

I was indignant beyond measure.  Had not Dermot told him the true story?  He shook his head, and was much concerned at having to say so, but he had so entirely ceased to put any confidence in Dermot’s statements that he preferred not listening to them.  And I knew it was vain to try to show him the difference between deliberate falsehood, which was abhorrent to Dermot, and the exaggerations and mystifications to which his uncle’s solemnity always prompted him.  I appealed to the county paper; but he had been abroad at the time, and had, moreover, been told that the facts had been hushed up.