"Oh, some hours. I fancy their dreams would be rather confused last night," she added, naively. "Poor old gentlemen!" said I. This sociability and inclination to talk the matter out, and, I may say, a certain amount of innocence and lack of worldly wisdom into the bargain, betrayed her occasionally into small improprieties of conduct that were not to be excused, and would possibly not have been forgiven in any one but Ideala. But such things were allowed in her as certain things are allowed in certain people--not because the things are right in themselves, but because the people who do them see no harm in them. There are people, too, who seem to enjoy the privilege of making wrong right by doing it. Society, however, only accords this privilege to a limited and distinguished few. When Ideala saw for herself that she had done an unjustifiable thing she was very ready to confess it. I always fancied she had some latent idea of making atonement in that way. It never mattered how much a story told against herself, nor how much malicious people might make of it to her discredit; she told all, inimitably, and with scrupulous fidelity to fact. One day she was standing waiting for a train at the station at York, and in her absent way she fixed her eyes on a gentleman who was walking about the platform. Presently he went up to her, and, without any apology or show of respect, remarked: "I am sure I have seen you before." "Probably," Ideala rejoined, as if the occurrence were the most natural thing in the world, "but I do not remember you. Perhaps if I heard your name----?" "Oh, I don't suppose you ever heard my name," he said. "In that case I can never have known you," she answered, calmly. "I never know any one except by name. I suppose you are an Englishman?" "Yes," he said, eagerly; "I am in the 5th----" "Ah, I thought so," she interrupted, placidly. "Englishmen in the 5th, and some other regiments, are apt to have but the one idea----" "And that is?" "And that is a bad one." He looked at her for a moment, and then, hat in hand, he made her a low bow, and left her without another word. "I think he felt ill, and went to have some refreshment," she added, when she told me. From what happened afterwards I am sure that at the time she had no idea of the real significance of the position in which she found herself placed on this occasion. But, as a rule, if she did or said the wrong thing, she became painfully conscious of the fact immediately afterwards--indeed, it was generally _afterwards_ that she grasped the full meaning of most things. She was ready with repartee without being in the least quick of understanding; she had to think things over, and even then she was not sure to do the right thing next time.