The _reunion_ was not cordial. Ease and Familiarity were not among the guests. But it was eminently correct. The most exacting Master of Ceremonies, the most severe authority upon Etiquette, would have been satisfied. We were extraordinarily polite. We made engaging conversation, we begged one another's pardon, we enjoyed one another's jokes. The dispensation and acceptance of hospitality did the respective forces infinite credit. After tea we were taken to see the pictures. Vandy, as showman, naturally escorted Adele. The rest of us, decently grouped about his sisters, followed like a party of sightseers in the wake of a verger. To do our host justice, he knew his own fathers. For what it was worth, the history of the Pleydell family lay at his fingers' ends. Men, manners and exploits--he knew them all. Indeed, years ago he had collected his knowledge and had it published in the form of a book. We had a copy somewhere. We were half-way along the gallery, and our cousin was in full blast, when Adele, to whom he was introducing the portraits with triumphant unction, started forward with a low cry. "That's the very man," she exclaimed, pointing at the picture of a middle-aged gentleman in a plum-coloured coat, which, I seemed to remember, was unsigned but attributed--without much confidence--to the brush of Gonzales Coques. "What an extraordinary thing! I've broken my dream." In the twinkling of an eye Vandy's importance was snatched from him, and the prophet's mantle had fallen upon Adele. Where, but a moment before, he had been strutting in all the pride of a proprietor, she held the stage. More. Neither our discomfited host nor his sisters could divine what was toward, and the fact that their guests crowded eagerly about Adele, encouraging her to "let them have it," was more disconcerting than ever.