Often when business required his presence at the Dower House, Mr. Gerton would plead most pressing engagements, and ask Kenelm to go in his place, then smile to himself as though he had done something very clever, for which he ought to be rewarded. He had all a business man’s contempt for sentiment and romance. He could understand marrying a handsome woman with a suitable fortune, who would be likely to do honor to the name she bore, but he could not understand wasting a life in lamenting and mourning over a dead love. Kenelm fell very unconsciously into the plot. Whenever Mr. Gerton asked him to go either to arrange one thing or another, he went. He went, too, very often when no business called him, for the purpose of talking to Mrs. Payton. One thing always amused him: Miss Hanson always received him with such a welcome, and with such a beaming, kindly smile. “I am so glad to see you, Mr. Eyrle. Dear me! how pleasant a little sociability is. I wish my dear young lady could see a little more of the world, she is so completely alone.” Kenelm had a shrewd suspicion that if he chose to ask the bright-eyed little spinster any question, he could hear all she knew of the other lady’s history. There were times when Miss Hanson seemed about to confide in him, but he shrank with the delicacy of a true gentleman from knowing anything of her history until she chose to confide in him herself. It was not long before he knew more. One day while reading that fashionable and veracious paper, _The Daily Intelligencer_, he saw a paragraph that struck him. “We are informed,” said that most edifying of journals, “that the young and beautiful Lady P----, whose trial lately caused so great a sensation in the fashionable world, has sought and found refuge in one of the most picturesque parts of the county of B----.” Kenelm Eyrle smiled to himself, thinking how contemptible was the custom of seeking out every detail of the life of a woman, supposed to be public property because she had been forced to appear before the public. He remembered Lady P----’s trial; it had been the great sensation of the day. People had gloated over it, every detail of her life had been greedily devoured; every word she had spoken had been reported, the details of her appearance, her dress, her behavior during the trial had almost made the fortune of the daily papers. He had read but little of it, though he could not avoid hearing it continually spoken of. He had even laid the papers down in deep disgust, thinking to himself that they would not be worth the reading until all that nonsense was over. That even he himself would be ever so distantly connected with it did not occur to him.