She looked him straight in the face, and spoke with intense feeling. "I mean, that no member of your family is likely to cross my threshold." There was something so threatening, so avenging in her voice, that he fell back a pace and said, hushed, "You speak as though you nursed a grudge against my family!" Madame smiled scornfully. "Oh! no grudge whatever." Then she added slowly and very quietly, "But I remember!" "Remember what?" cried he, more and more bewildered. For a moment she did not answer. Then she turned to him and spoke. "Am I so changed—Jack Sayle?" He stared. "Indeed, ma’am—" then suddenly he saw and remembered. He could only exclaim, "Good God!" "Are you still puzzled?" she asked, with that mysterious smile of hers. "Lucy!" "Lucy Pryor," she assented. She bowed and turned away. Lord Otford was stunned. "No—no," he stammered. "Stop!—this alters the case entirely!" She turned on him with raised eyebrows. "How?" He was entirely at a loss. He had spoken on the spur of the moment. All the past had suddenly risen up before him, all his youth had come flooding back. The birds sang in the old vicarage garden; his experiences, his worldly honours, sank from him, and he was a lad again, deeply in love; and here stood his first sweetheart—his only sweetheart—the woman who meant youth and spring-time and all the ideals of boyhood. He bowed his head. "I—I don’t know. I am stunned!—After all these years!" She was merciless. Also she was on her guard. She must not let herself be defeated by sentimentality. As she looked at him and saw him standing humbled before her, a still small voice in her heart cried out in pity. That would never do. He had blighted her youth; his son had hurt Marjolaine. She must remember. She must be firm. So she silenced the appealing voice and spoke with an admirable assumption of lightness. "Why, what does it all amount to? After all these years Lord Otford meets Madame Lachesnais. These are not the Jack Sayle and the Lucy Pryor who loved, years ago. He does not meet a broken-hearted woman pining for her lost girlhood, but," she drew herself up and her voice grew firmer, "but one who has been a happy wife, and a happy mother—and a mother who will defend her daughter’s happiness." Then the mockery returned, intensified. "So there is no cause for such a tragic countenance, my lord!" Otford winced. He was humbled; he was angry with himself, and angry with her. "Madam," said he, "I am well rebuked. I wish you a very good day!" He made her a very low bow, and turned on his heel. Inwardly he was raging, and when, at the corner of the Walk, he ran right into the Eyesore who was innocently returning to his fishing, that unfortunate creature received the full force of his anger in a muttered but none the less hearty curse.