It was an odd conference--back to back--the old lady stiff and high--staring pale and grimly at the opposite wall. The Baronet looking with a quizzical smile on his handsome face in the mirror--now plucking at a whisker--now poking at a curl with his finger-tip--and now in the same light way arranging the silken fall of his necktie. "There's nothing my dear little mamma can say, I'll not listen to with pleasure." "There is much I might say you could not listen to with pleasure." The cold was growing more intense, and bitter in tone and emphasis, as she addressed the Italian picture of Adonis and his two dogs hanging on the distant wall. "Well, with _respect_, _not_ with pleasure--no," said he, and tapped his white upper teeth with the nail of his middle finger. "Assuming, then, that you speak truth, it is high time, Jekyl Marlowe, that you should alter your courses--here's your daughter, just come out. It is ridiculous, your affecting the vices of youth. Make up as you will--you're past the middle age--you're an elderly man now." "You can't vex me that way, you dear old mamma," he said, with a chuckle, which looked for the first time a little vicious in the glass. "We baronets, you know, are all booked, and all the world can read our ages; but you women manage better--you and your two dear sisters, Winifred and Georgiana." "They are _dead_," interrupted Lady Alice, with more asperity than pathos. "Yes, I know, poor old souls--to be sure, peers' daughters die like other people, I'm afraid." "And when they do, are mentioned, if not with sorrow, at least with decent respect, by persons, that is, who know how to behave themselves." There was a slight quiver in Lady Alice's lofty tone that pleased Sir Jekyl, as you might have remarked had you looked over his shoulder into the glass. "Well, you know, I was speaking not of deaths but births, and only going to say if you look in the peerage you'll find all the men, poor devils, pinned to their birthdays, and the women left at large, to exercise their veracity on the point; but you need not care--you have not pretended to youth for the last ten years I think." "You are excessively impertinent, sir." "I _know_ it," answered Sir Jekyl, with a jubilant chuckle. A very little more, the Baronet knew, and Lady Alice Redcliffe would have risen gray and grim, and sailed out of the room. Their partings were often after this sort. But he did not wish matters to go quite that length at present. So he said, in a sprightly way, as if a sudden thought had struck him-- "By Jove, I believe I _am devilish_ impertinent, without knowing it though--and you have forgiven me so often, I'm sure you _will_ once more, and I am really so much obliged for your kindness to Beatrix. I am, indeed." So he took her hand, and kissed it. CHAPTER III. Concerning two Remarkable Persons who appeared in Wardlock Church. Lady Alice carried her thin Roman nose some degrees higher; but she said--