When a lady confines herself studiously to the house, avoids active exercise, and partakes heartily of five meals a day, not to mention strong tea and hot buttered toast at odd times, the presumption is, that her health will suffer from the effects of such combined hardships. With patients of Gingham’s class, the attack generally flies to the nerves, and the system becomes wrought up to such a pitch that nothing appears to afford the sufferer relief, except piercing screams and violent demonstrations of alarm upon slight and often imaginary occasions. Gingham would shriek as loudly to encounter a live mouse as Mrs. Kettering would have done to face a raging lion; and an unexpected meeting with any individual, even residing in the same house, was apt to produce a flutter of spirits and prostration of intellect, truly surprising to those who are unacquainted with the delicate organisation of a real lady’s-maid _not_ on board wages. In this critical condition, Mrs. Gingham, on the first evening of her arrival at St. Swithin’s, “got a start,” as she expressed it, which influenced the whole destiny of her after life. Coming down from dressing her lady, she wended her way, as usual, to “the room,” that sanctum in which the etiquette of society is far more rigidly enforced than up-stairs, and to which “plush and powder” would find it far more difficult to obtain the entrée than into master’s study or “missus’s” boudoir. Expecting to see nothing more formidable than the butler, Gingham’s alarm can be more easily imagined than described, when on entering this privileged apartment, she found its only occupant a goodish-looking, flashily-dressed young man, “taking a glass of sherry and a biscuit,” and making himself very much at home. A suppressed scream and sudden accession of faintness made it imperative on the new arrival to exert himself, and by the time they had got to “Goodness! how you frightened me, sir,” and “Dear _Miss_, I beg a thousand pardings!” they became very good friends, and the timid fair one was prevailed on to sit down and partake of the refreshments hospitably provided by the butler at his mistress’s expense. Tom Blacke very soon informed the lady that “he was assistant to a professional gentleman” (in plain English an attorney’s clerk), and had merely looked in to see if the house was let, to inform his employer. “I am very unhappy, miss, to have been the cause of alarming of you so, and I trust you will look over it, and may feel no ill effects from the haccident.” To which Gingham, who was a lady of elaborate politeness, as became her station, and, moreover, much mollified by the constant use of the juvenile title “Miss,” courteously replied that, “Indeed, it had given her _quite a turn_, but she could not regret a meeting that had introduced her to such a polite acquaintance.” So they parted with many “good evenings,” and an openly expressed hope that they should meet again.