He is roused from his meditations by Brown's voice, to find himself in Brown's study, where its owner is filling himself a pipe, and festally offering him whisky-and-water. But it is only an abstracted attention that Burgoyne lends, either to the whisky or the whisky's master; and his answers are sometimes inattentively beside the mark, to talk, which indeed is not without some likeness to the boasted exploits in Clement's Inn, and the affectionate inquiries after Jane Nightwork, of a more famous fool than he. It is a relief to the guest when, earlier than he had expected--a blessing he, no doubt, owes to Mrs. Brown--his host breaks up the séance, and he is free to retire to his own room. At once he is back in that Devonshire garden, he is there almost all night, between sleep and wake. It is strange that persons and circumstances banished from his memory for ten long years should rush back with such tyrannous insistence now. Such silly recollected trifles crowd back upon his mind. The day on which Tom nearly choked himself by swallowing a barley beard; the day on which the lop-eared rabbit littered--ah, rabbits, of course! those were what Rose had!--the day on which Tom pushed Miriam into the moat, and Elizabeth fell in, too, in trying to fish her out. Elizabeth, the eldest, the almost grown-up one, embarrassed by her newly lengthened petticoats, so harassing at cricket, in races, in climbing apple-trees. Elizabeth was sixteen; he remembers the fact, because her birthday had fallen two days before his own departure. He had given her a gold thimble set with turquoises upon the occasion; it was not a surprise, because he recalls measuring her finger for the size. He can see that small middle finger now. Elizabeth must now be twenty-six years of age. Where is she? What is she--maid, wife, or widow? And why has Mrs. Le Marchant's hair turned snow-white? Had it been merely gray he would not have complained, though he would have deplored the loss of the fine smooth inky sweep he remembers. She has a fair right to be gray; Mrs. Le Marchant must be about forty-six or forty-seven, bien sonné. But white, snow-white--the hue that one connects with a venerable extremity of age. Can it be bleached? He has heard of women bleaching their hair; but not Mrs. Le Marchant, not the Mrs. Le Marchant he remembers. She would have been as incapable of bleach as of dye. Then why is she snow-haired? Because Providence has so willed it is the obvious answer. But somehow Burgoyne cannot bring himself to believe that she has come fairly by that white head.