Such were the troubled and disconnected thoughts which hurried through Mrs. Pache's mind while she listened with apparent attention to her odd, but now celebrated kinsman. General Lingard was trying to make himself pleasant to his cousin Annie by telling her of a missionary expedition to Tibet. Mrs. Pache had always been interested in missionaries; she was a subscriber to the S.P.C.K. The Society's publications satisfied that passion for romance which sometimes survives in the most commonplace human being, especially if that human being be a woman. Just now General Lingard was speaking with kindling enthusiasm of a certain medical missionary's fine work in West Africa. But Mrs. Pache's face clouded distrustfully. She had suddenly remembered a scene in her school-room, her children, Tom and his sister, together with two little friends, sitting round Hew Lingard listening with breathless interest to the adventures of another missionary. This divine had sent home as relics the clothes he had worn when he had succeeded in converting a whole village in Africa, and Mrs. Pache vividly recalled the foolish verses which Lingard had declaimed to her young people with solemn face and twinkling eyes--verses which cruelly misinterpreted the missionary's intention. Against her will the jingling lines ran in her head-- "He preached--and did not bore them; Their chief, a hoary man, Replied, 'We are converted, But, to turn to other topics, Betrousered and beshirted, You're _outré_ in the Tropics.' The preacher is convinced in turn And dresses--like his flock...." She remembered with irritation how the children had insisted on making a copy of these absurd, most unbecoming, rhymes, and how they had continually sung them to the beautiful old tune of "She Wore a Wreath of Roses." Mrs. Pache allowed her eyes to wander round the table. How wizened and old Dick Wantele was beginning to look! If poor Mr. Maule lasted much longer, Wantele would be quite middle-aged before he came into this fine property. At one time--oh, long ago now, ten years ago, when they first moved into the neighbourhood, when Patty was only sixteen--Mrs. Pache had had a vague hope that Dick Wantele and her Patty might take a liking to one another. Oddly enough, quite the opposite had happened! Though thrown into the conventional intimacy induced by propinquity, Patty had disliked Dick from the first; she thought him priggish and affected, and he was never more than coldly civil; how odd now to think that till the other day, they had all vaguely supposed that he would end by marrying Miss Oglander.... Mrs. Pache looked fondly at her daughter. Patty didn't look as well as usual to-night--her gown showed too much red arm. No doubt high evening dresses were "coming in," for Mrs. Maule was generally in advance of the fashion.