But things were only at the dull unromantic stage of fog this morning at Number 33 Bouverie Terrace, where two ladies were seated at breakfast. It was not a bad little breakfast in its way. There were temptingly fried bacon and London muffins, and the coffee looked and scented good. But the room was foggy, and the silver was electroplate of the regulation lodging-house kind, and there was nothing extraordinarily cheering in the surroundings in general, nothing to call up or explain the beaming pleasure, the indescribable sunshininess, pervading the whole person of the younger of the two companions; brightness and pleasure reflected scarce undiminished on the older face of her mother as she sat behind the breakfast tray. "It is just too beautiful, too lovely, mamsey dear. And oh, how clever it was of you to think of it! We might have been years and years without ever coming across these old friends, mightn't we?" she exclaimed. "We might never have come across them; probably we never should, if I had left it to chance," said Mrs Wentworth, with a little tone of complacency. "But that I would scarcely have thought it right to do, considering the old friendship and the kindness Mrs Helmont when a girl received from my people. Not that I can remember it clearly, of course; she is ever so much older than I,"--and here the complacency became a little more evident. "Why, her eldest daughter, Mrs Poland, can't be much under thirty-five." "_Almost_ as old as you, mamsey," said Imogen. "For you know you're not forty yet, and I don't think I'm _ever_ going to allow you to be forty." "You silly child," said her mother, smiling. "Why, you may be married before we know where we are, and it would not do at all to be a grandmother--fancy me a grandmother!--and not forty. I should have to pretend I was." "Wait till the time comes," said Imogen, sagely. "I'm not at all sure that I ever _shall_ marry. I should be so terribly afraid of finding out he had a bad temper, or was horribly extravagant, or--or--" "You absurd child, who ever put such ideas into your mind?" said her mother, looking at her with fond pride. "Oh, I don't know," Imogen replied, with a little coquettish toss of her head; "I _think_ a lot of things, and then you know, in books mamsey, too often men who seem very nice are really dreadful tyrants or something horrid after they're married." "Well, darling, there shall be choice care taken as to whom we give _you_ to," said her mother. "I daresay it won't be the first comer, nor the second, nor third whom I shall think worthy of my Imogen." "I wonder when he will come," thought the girl to herself, but she did not express the thought. She only smiled and blushed a little at her mother's words. "Tell me more about the Helmonts, mamsey," she said. "You have been there once, didn't you say?"