’Well, my deal, this is a nice day, not too hot or too cold; I do not see why I should not walk down with you and call.  If I find it too far, we can take a cab to go back.’

’Oh, thank you, Aunt Ada; it is very very kind of you, and there is no knowing when Aunt Jane may be able to go.  I don’t like to close up my Indian letter till I can say I have seen them.’

Gillian fidgeted a good deal lest, before her aunt’s postprandial repose was over, visitors should come and put a stop to everything, and she looked ready to cut the throat of a poor lady in a mushroom hat, who came up to leave a message for Miss Mohun about a possible situation for one of her class of boys.

However, at last they started, Kunz and all, Miss Adeline quite infected by Gillian’s excitement.

‘So your father and mother were very fond of them.’

’Papa thought very highly of him, and was very sorry he had to return,’ said Gillian.

‘And she was a beautiful Greek.’

Gillian began to be quite afraid of what she might have said.

‘I don’t think she is more than half Greek,’ she said.  ’I believe her mother was a Gorfiote, but her father was English or Irish.  I believe he kept a shop in Malta.’

’Quite a mixture of nationalities then, and no wonder she is beautiful.  That youth had a very striking profile; it quite reminded me of a gem as I saw it against the dark pillar.’

‘I did not say she was very beautiful now,’ said Gillian, feeling a qualm as she recollected the Queen of the White Ants, and rather oddly divided between truthfulness, fear of alarming her aunt into turning back, and desire of giving her a little preparation.

’Ah! those southern beauties soon go on.  Some one told me that Lord Byron’s “Maid of Athens,” whose portrait I used to think the loveliest thing in the world, became a great stout woman, but was quite a mother to all the young Englishmen about.  I remember I used to try to hold my head and keep my eyelids down like the engraving in an old book that had been my mother’s.’

‘Oh!  I think I have seen it at Beechcroft,’ said Gillian, very much amused, for she now perceived whence arose Aunt Ada’s peculiar turn of the head and droop of the eyelashes, and how the conscious affectation of childhood had become unconsciously crystallised.

She grew more and more anxious as they found some difficulty in making out Ivinghoe Terrace, and found it at last to be a row of rather dilapidated little houses, apparently built of lath and stucco, and of that peculiar meanness only attained by the modern suburb.  Aunt Ada evidently did not like it at all, and owned herself almost ready to turn back, being sure that Valetta must have made some mistake.  Gillian repeated that she had always said the Whites were very poor, but she began to feel that her impatience had misled her, and that she would have been better off with the aunt who was used to such places, and