“Oh! how do you do?” he said to Augusta, holding out his hand, which she took rather coldly. “How do you do, Mr. Meeson,” she answered. “Let me introduce you to Lady Holmhurst. Mr. Meeson, Lady Holmhurst.” Eustace bowed, and put his hat down on the butter-dish, for he was very much overcome. “I hope that I have not come too early,” he said in great confusion, as he perceived his mistake. “I thought that you would have done breakfast.” “Oh, not at all Mr. Meeson,” said Lady Holmhurst. “Won’t you have a cup of tea? Augusta, give Mr. Meeson a cup of tea.” He took the tea, which he did not want in the least, and then there came an awkward silence. Nobody seemed to know how to begin the conversation. “How did you find the house, Mr. Meeson?” said Lady Holmhurst, at last. “Miss Smithers gave you no address, and there are two Lady Holmhursts—my mother-in-law and myself.” “Oh, I looked it out, and then I walked here last night and saw you both sitting at the window.” “Indeed!” said Lady Holmhurst. “And why did you not come in? You might have helped to protect Miss Smithers from the reporters.” “I don’t know,” he answered confusedly. “I did not like to; and, besides, a policeman thought I was a suspicious character and told me to move on.” “Dear me, Mr. Meeson; you must have been having a good look at us.” Here Augusta interposed, fearing lest her admirer—for with an unerring instinct, she now guessed how matters stood—should say something foolish. A young man who is capable of standing to stare at a house in Hanover-square is, she thought, evidently capable of anything. “I was surprised to see you yesterday,” she said. “How did you know we were coming?” Eustace told her that he had seen it in the _Globe_. “I am sure you cannot have been so surprised as I was,” he went on, “I had made sure that you were drowned. I went up to Birmingham to call on you after you had gone, and found that you had vanished and left no address. The maid-servant declared that you had sailed in a ship called the ‘Conger Eel’—which I afterwards found out was Kangaroo. And then she went down; and after a long time they published a full list of the passengers and your name was not among them, and I thought that after all you might have got off the ship or something. Then, some days afterwards, came a telegram from Albany, in Australia, giving the names of Lady Holmhurst and the others who were saved, and specially mentioning ‘Miss Smithers—the novelist’ and Lord Holmhurst as being among the drowned, and that is how the dreadful suspense came to an end. It was awful, I can tell you.” Both of the young women looked at Eustace’s face and saw that there was no mistaking the real nature of the trial through which he had passed. So real was it, that it never seemed to occur to him that there was anything unusual in his expressing such intense interest in the affairs of a young lady with whom he was outwardly, at any rate, on the terms of merest acquaintance.