“If she takes me on, you mean.  She’s not a lady’s-maid, though I intend to go with her; and she may as well give in first as last, for I’m going.  Now see how nice I am to you, sir!  I’ve provided you, too, with a post in her suite, as you will come with me.  No, never mind asking me what it is just yet; all things come to him who waits; and if you will only accept the post of waiter, I mean all things to come to you.”

“All things, Hilda?” I asked, meaningly, with a little tremor of delight.

She looked at me with a sudden passing tenderness in her eyes.  “Yes, all things, Hubert.  All things.  But we mustn’t talk of that—­though I begin to see my way clearer now.  You shall be rewarded for your constancy at last, dear knight-errant.  As to my chaperon, I’m not afraid of her boring me; she bores herself, poor lady; one can see that, just to look at her; but she will be much less bored if she has us two to travel with.  What she needs is constant companionship, bright talk, excitement.  She has come away from London, where she swims with the crowd; she has no resources of her own, no work, no head, no interests.  Accustomed to a whirl of foolish gaieties, she wearies her small brain; thrown back upon herself, she bores herself at once, because she has nothing interesting to tell herself.  She absolutely requires somebody else to interest her.  She can’t even amuse herself with a book for three minutes together.  See, she has a yellow-backed French novel now, and she is only able to read five lines at a time; then she gets tired and glances about her listlessly.  What she wants is someone gay, laid on, to divert her all the time from her own inanity.”

“Hilda, how wonderfully quick you are at reading these things!  I see you are right; but I could never have guessed so much myself from such small premises.”

“Well, what can you expect, my dear boy?  A girl like this, brought up in a country rectory, a girl of no intellect, busy at home with the fowls, and the pastry, and the mothers’ meetings—­suddenly married offhand to a wealthy man, and deprived of the occupations which were her salvation in life, to be plunged into the whirl of a London season, and stranded at its end for want of the diversions which, by dint of use, have become necessaries of life to her!”

“Now, Hilda, you are practising upon my credulity.  You can’t possibly tell from her look that she was brought up in a country rectory.”

“Of course not.  You forget.  There my memory comes in.  I simply remember it.”

“You remember it?  How?”

“Why, just in the same way as I remembered your name and your mother’s when I was first introduced to you.  I saw a notice once in the births, deaths, and marriages—­’At St. Alphege’s, Millington, by the Rev. Hugh Clitheroe, M.A., father of the bride, Peter Gubbins, Esq., of The Laurels, Middleston, to Emilia Frances, third daughter of the Rev. Hugh Clitheroe, rector of Millington.’”