This Aunt was Professor Howel-Jones's youngest sister, a small demure woman of forty-five, with the air of constantly saying, "Of course _I_ am the failure of the family." She had been left a widow very young, and it was her pose to give out that she had never been asked to marry again. But her pretty eyes laughed, most disconcertingly, while the rest of her face remained prim. She smoked, sang Clarice Mayne's songs and forbade Olwen to call her "Aunt" anything. "Thank you, Lizzie," said her niece, as this lady handed her over a letter that had arrived by the last post. Then, glancing at the signature, Olwen gave a little exclamation of surprise. It was over the well-known type of coincidence that brings a letter from some one almost immediately following one's own thoughts of that some one. For the letter was signed, "Yours affectionately, AGATHA WALSH." Miss Walsh wrote from Paris, where she had just been having "Oh, such a lovely time shopping with Madame Leroux, who had taken a month away from the hotel, and had been looking up some of the relations----" Followed an account of these relations who had evidently taken the English _fiancée_ to their bosoms; Agatha, who had been English and provincial, was rapidly becoming a good French _bourgeoise_. She went on, "Oh, and there is such news, Olwen. Figure to yourself that Gustave is coming to London with General Chose next week! Coming as his orderly! Just think how lovely for me! Of course I shall come over at once. I have not been in England since September! We must all meet, we and you and the Professor and dear Mrs. Cartwright, if she is in town! And won't it be like old times again! and oh, Olwen, I may even be getting married----" This last word was so heavily underlined that Olwen had to laugh, and the Aunt asked her what she was so pleased at. "Oh, only that there _are_ some very happy people in the world even now," said Olwen. "'Some' pessimist", murmured the Aunt, whose vocabulary was not of her epoch. "Never mind, Olwen; I have just remembered something. An admirer rang you up on the telephone this afternoon, and would you ring him up at the Regent Palace Hotel as soon as you came in----?" "What?" said Olwen, astonished. "What was his name, and why d'you think he was an admirer, Lizzie?" "I think he admired you by the tone of his voice, in which he said, 'Miss Olwen,'" said the demure Aunt, who had a private and vicarious delight in watching all the activities of her young niece. "As for his name----what was it now? Something rather out of the way." "I don't know," wondered Olwen. "Was it Mr. Ellerton?" "Oh, no; not our young Naval man who finished our last drop of whisky, by the way--no, I thought at once of him, dear, but it wasn't. It was--oh, yes! He said, '_Ask her to ring up Lieutenant Brown_.'" "What? _Not_ Little Mr. Brown?"