"No, sir. I never saw her until to-day." Mrs. Aultane bent her head. "Mrs. James? Who _is_ Mrs. James? And the other one, too? I should be glad to know, Mr. Travice Arkell." "I can't tell you much about them, Mrs. Aultane," returned Travice, suppressing the laugh of mischief in his eye. "I saw them for the first time in the concert-room." "They came with your relative, Peter Arkell's daughter." "Exactly so. That is, she came with them." "Some people from the country, I suppose," concluded Mrs. Aultane, with as much hauteur as she thought it safe to put into her tone. "It is easy to be seen they have no style about them." Travice laughed and went across the room. He was speaking to the ladies in question, when a gentleman of three or four-and-twenty came up and tapped him on the back. "Won't you speak to me? It _is_ Travice Arkell, I see, though he has shot up into a man." One moment's indecision, and Travice took the hand in his. "Anderson! Can it be?" "It can, and is. _Captain_ Anderson, if you please, sir, now." "No!" "It's true. I have been lucky, and have got my company early." "But what brings you here? I did not know you were in Westerbury." "I arrived only this morning. Hearing of your concert when I got here, I thought I'd look in; but it was half over then, and I barely got inside the room. You don't mean to say that you are in the school still?" Travice laughed, and held out the betraying cap. "It is a shame. I am too big for it. I have only a month or two longer to stay." "But you must have been in beyond your time." "I know I have." "And who is senior?" "Need you ask, looking at my size. This is Lucy; have you forgotten her?" Captain Anderson turned. He had been educated in the college school, a private pupil of the head master's. Travice Arkell was only a junior in it when Anderson left; but Anderson had been intimate at the houses of both the Arkells. "Miss Lucy sprung up to this! You were the prettiest little child when I left. And your sisters, Travice? I should like to see them." Lucy laughed and blushed. Captain Anderson began talking to Mrs. James, and to the young lady who sat between her and Lucy. "I can't stop," he presently said. "I see the master there. And that--yes, that must be Mr. and Mrs. Prattleton. There! the master is scanning me through his spectacles, wondering whether it's me or somebody else. I'll come back to you, Arkell." He went forward, and was beset at once. People were beginning to recognise him. Anderson, the private pupil, had been popular in the grounds. Mrs. Aultane on one side, Mrs. Lewis on the other, took forcible possession of him, ere he had been a minute with the head master and his wife. It was hard to believe that the former somewhat sickly, fair-haired private pupil, who had been coddled by Mrs. Wilberforce with bark and flannel and beaten-up eggs, could be this fine soldierly man.