What is the matter with the girl? there is certainly something very odd about her. He has noticed her but cursorily so far, but now gives her an attentively examining look. She appears to be perfectly sane, and not in the least shy. Is that handsome mouth, fresh and well cut, absolutely incapable of framing any syllable but 'Yes'? He gives himself some little trouble so to compose his next question that the answer, 'Yes,' to it shall be impossible. 'Do you happen to recollect whether it was this month or September? Lady Betty Harborough and I had an argument about it as we came up from the station.' _Lady Betty Harborough!_ With what a brazen front he himself has introduced her! She, Peggy, would as soon have thought of flying in the air as of mentioning that name which he has just so matter-of-factly pronounced. 'I am afraid that I do not remember,' she answers frostily. He looks at her again, in growing wonder. What _does_ ail her? Is it, after all, a mysterious form of shyness? He knows under how many odd disguises that strange malady of civilisation hides itself. Despite his thirty-two years, is not he shy himself sometimes? Poor girl, he can feel for her! 'Not only did we meet here,' pursues he, with a pleasant friendly smile, 'but Lady Roupell was good enough to take me down to call upon you at your own house.' 'Yes?' Well, it is uphill work! If he has to labour at the oar like this from now until dessert, there will not be much left of him at the end. Well, never mind! it is all in the day's work; only he will ask Lady Roupell quietly not to inflict this impossible dummy upon him again. 'We came down upon you in great force, I remember--it was on a Sunday--Lady Roupell, Freddy, the Bentincks, the Harboroughs.' He pauses, discouraged, despite himself. She has been leisurely sipping her soup, and now lays down her spoon, looking straight before her. He heaves a loud sigh, but not even that induces her to look round at him. 'Lady Roupell often brings people down on Sunday afternoons,' she says, in an indifferent voice, which implies that it is a quite impossible feat for her memory to separate the one insignificant Sunday to which he alludes from all or any others. In point of fact, she remembers it perfectly, and the recollection of it adds a double chill to her tone. On that very Sunday afternoon did not this man and his Lady Betty flagrantly lose themselves for an hour in an orchard six yards square? Did not Lady Betty, without leave asked or given, eat all the mulberries that were ripe on Peggy's one tree? Did not she, in rude horse-play pelting a foolish guardsman with green apples, break a bell-glass that sheltered the picotee cuttings cherished of Jacob's and of Peggy's souls? Ignorant of the offensive reminiscences he has stirred up, Mr. Talbot blunders on: 'I remember you had a tame----'