The much-vexed question of Mary Fitton’s identity with the "Dark Lady of the Sonnets" had raged with violence in Billy’s house. His father had written many articles upon the subject—articles appearing in those fat, uninteresting magazines which littered drawing-room and study; in whose closely printed pages Billy sought in vain for "pictures and conversations." He did wish that Dad wrote for the _Strand_. Curiously enough, as they rode home in the gathering eventide, the thought jumped into Billy’s head that the dark lady of the sonnets must have been exactly like the Baroness. With the inconsequent aptness of childhood he proceeded to quote aloud lines learned to please his father: "For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." The lady pulled up short and, turning in her saddle, asked with a catch in her voice, "Why do you say that? What is it? Where is it from?" "Oh, it’s those sonnets, you know—I’ve learnt lots of ’em to please my dad." "But what made you quote that just then?" persisted the Baroness, her eyes dark and tragic with some nameless fear: "What made you quote it then? Were you thinking of me?" Billy blushed and took off his cap that he might rumple his hair, a thing he always did when perplexed. "I _was_ thinking of you," he said at last, "yet that has nothing to do with you. This has though"—and, blushing more than ever, Billy repeated: "Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me, Knowing thy heart, torment me with disdain; Have put on black, and loving mourners be, Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain: And truly not the morning sun of heaven Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east, Nor that full star that ushers in the even, Than those two mourning eyes become thy face. Billy stopped breathless, but confident that he had said the right thing this time. "It is very pretty!" said the lady with a sigh—"but the other is true. What a queer little boy you are to repeat poetry like that! How old are you?" "I shall be nine at Easter. Then I go to school. Where are you going when the hunting is over? It ends early here; we never kill a May fox—the crops, you know." "I don’t know where I shall go, probably to London, or to Paris, or——" here she murmured something in a language Billy did not understand, then, turning to him, said dreamily: "’That is my home of love: if I have ranged, Like him that travels, I return again.’ You see I know something of your poetry too! But, wherever I go, I shall be lonely—lonely and sad." There was a sound of tears in her voice. Billy, infinitely distressed, felt that this melancholy lady must be cheered and encouraged, so he said stoutly: "I’ve never seen you alone before. You’ve generally got Mr. Rigby Folaire, or Captain Garth, or Lord Edward, or all of them."