"I am so glad it is you," she said as she shook hands with Lilias. "I was so afraid it might be some other Miss Western, though the name is uncommon, not like _Weston_. Do you know what I did? Fancy anything so stupid! I lost your address, which you remember I noted down on a bit of paper in Dr --'s waiting-room. I could not remember the name of the friends you were staying with, and of course hunting for you in all the hotels in London would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack. And I have so little time, I am always so hurried to get back to Anselm when I am out. It was not till the day before we left town that it occurred to me to try to trace you through Dr --, and when I went to his house for the purpose, he was off to the country! Oh! you don't know how vexed I was." "And how did you find me out here?" asked Lilias, a little bewildered by Mrs Brabazon's unconcealed eagerness to prosecute the acquaintance so unexpectedly begun. "By the local paper--the visitor's guide, or whatever they call it. Of course I was not looking for _you_, I had no reason to suppose you were here; but the moment I saw the name Western I felt sure it must be you, and Anselm felt sure that Greville was the name of your friends. It really seems quite--what people call providential, though, somehow, I never like using the expression in that way." "And how is your nephew--young Mr Brooke?" said Lilias. Mrs Brabazon shook her head. "It is Basil over again--ah, it is heart-breaking work," she said, sadly. "But I forget, I am speaking to you as if you knew all about us." "Somehow I feel as if I did," said Lilias, "the familiar names--one of my brothers is Basil, and another Anselm Brooke, but we call him Brooke always." "And which is Basil?" "The eldest," said Lilias. "He has got a berth, as he calls it, in an office in the city. It is a good opening, I believe, and he will probably be sent out to India in a year or two. But in the mean time, of course, he gets very little, and--and it keeps us very strait at home," she added, with a smile. Mrs Brabazon listened with unfeigned interest. "I must hear all about them," she said. "But not to-day. And I am keeping you out here in the passage all this time." "That is my fault," said Lilias. "Won't you come in? I _know_ Mrs Greville would be pleased to see you." (A thoroughly true assertion, as Mrs Greville was already on the verge of that peculiar phase of _ennui_ so apt to seize on active practical people when away from "home" and its duties, stranded in a strange place where they know no one, and never go out without the consciousness of the terrible word "visitors" branded on their foreheads.) "Not to-day, thank you, my dear. I _must_ run home," said Mrs Brabazon. "But tell me what day will you spend with us? Can you come to-morrow? We are at the --."