"Over from where? What boat?" "Boulogne." "Have you been staying there?" "We are living there. We have left Helstonleigh--oh, ever so long ago. Mamma got tired of it, and so did I and Mary." Roland's ill-humour disappeared with the old reminiscences, for they plunged into histories past and present. Home days and home people, mixed with slight anecdotes of Port Natal life. Mrs. Joliffe had quitted Helstonleigh very shortly after that occurrence that had so startled the town--the death, of John Ollivera. It was perhaps natural, perhaps only a curious accident, that the sad fact should be reverted to between them now as they talked: we all know how one subject leads to another. Clare Joliffe grew confidential about that and other things. One bond she and Roland seemed to have between them this night--a grievance against Mrs. Bede Greatorex. Roland's consisted in that lady's unkind treatment (real or fancied) of Miss Channing, the notion of which he had but picked up that selfsame day. Clare Joliffe's resentment appeared to be more general, and of longer standing. "It's such an unkind thing of her, Roland--I may call you Roland, I suppose?" "Call me Ro if you like," said easy Roland. "Here's Louisa in this nice position, servants, and carriages, and company about her, no children, living like a queen; and never once has she invited me or Mary inside her doors. It's a great shame. She should hear what mamma thinks of it. I don't suppose she'd have asked me now, only she could not well avoid it, as I am passing through London to visit some friends in the country. Mamma wrote to ask her to give me a night's lodging, and then she wrote back, inviting me to stay a week or two." "Why should she not have had you before?" "Oh, I don't suppose there has been any reason, except that she has not thought of it. Louisa was always made up of self. We never fancied she'd marry Bede Greatorex." "Why not?" "At least, what we thought was, that Bede would not marry her. He must have cared for her very much, or he would not, after the affair about John Ollivera." "What had that to do with it?" questioned Roland, opening his eyes--for he supposed the young lady was alluding to the barrister's death. "She engaged herself to both of them." "Who did?" "Louisa." "Did she!" Clare Joliffe nodded. "We never quite understood how it was. She was up here on a visit for ever so long, weeks and weeks; it was in the time of Mrs. Greatorex; and if she did not promise herself to Bede, there was at least a good deal of flirtation going on between them. We got to know that after Louisa returned home. The next year, when John Ollivera was at Helstonleigh, she had a flirtation with him. I know she used to write to both of them. Anyway, at the time of his last visit, when the death occurred, she had managed to engage herself to the two."