"But finally," he returned, "they're all that's left us, if they're left themselves. They are the only signs to the few who knew us that we ever existed. They stand for our characters, our personality, our mind, our soul." She said, "That is very true," and then she suddenly gave him the cards. "Do you know these people?" "I? I thought they were friends of yours," he replied, astonished. [Illustration: A LIVELY MATRON, OF AS YOUTHFUL A TEMPERAMENT AS THE LIVELY GIRLS SHE BROUGHT IN HER TRAIN, BURST UPON THEM] "That is what papa thinks," Miss Gerald said, and while she sat dreamily absent, a rustle of skirts and a flutter of voices pierced from the surrounding shrubbery, and then a lively matron, of as youthful a temperament as the lively girls she brought in her train, burst upon them, and Miss Gerald was passed from one embrace to another until all four had kissed her. She returned their greeting, and shared, in her quieter way, their raptures at their encounter. "Such a hunt as we've had for you!" the matron shouted. "We've been up-stairs and down-stairs and in my lady's chamber, all over the hotel. Where's your father? Ah, they did get our cards to you!" and by that token Lanfear knew that these ladies were the Bells. He had stood up in a sort of expectancy, but Miss Gerald did not introduce him, and a shadow of embarrassment passed over the party which she seemed to feel least, though he fancied a sort of entreaty in the glance that she let pass over him. "I suppose he's gone to look for _us_!" Mrs. Bell saved the situation with a protecting laugh. Miss Gerald colored intelligently, and Lanfear could not let Mrs. Bell's implication pass. "If it is Mrs. Bell," he said, "I can answer that he has. I met you at Magnolia some years ago, Mrs. Bell. Dr. Lanfear." "Oh, I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanfear," Miss Gerald said. "I couldn't think--" "Of my tag, my label?" he laughed back. "It isn't very distinctly lettered." Mrs. Bell was not much minding them jointly. She was singling Lanfear out for the expression of her pleasure in seeing him again, and recalling the incidents of her summer at Magnolia before, it seemed, any of her girls were out. She presented them collectively, and the eldest of them charmingly reminded Lanfear that he had once had the magnanimity to dance with her when she sat, in a little girl's forlorn despair of being danced with, at one of those desolate hops of the good old Osprey House.