"Oh yes!" she exclaimed. "I know who they are now, thoroughly good people, a little old-fashioned perhaps. And you think your parents would be quite pleased for you to renew the acquaintance?" "I'm sure of it," I said; "but don't you think it would be enough to go there to luncheon one day? I am so perfectly happy here, I don't want to go anywhere else." "Dear," was the reply, "I do like to hear you say so. Having you is almost"--and here the tiny shadow that sometimes crept into her eyes was for a moment perceptible--"_almost_ like having a daughter of my own. But as it happens--I know I may be quite frank with you--it would answer rather well for you to go to these good people for a couple of days or so. Say next Friday to the Monday after? Henry and I have a rather special invitation for those days, and though I had not dreamt of mentioning it to you, now that this has turned up, it all seems to fit in, for my husband would like me to go with him to his uncle's." I was of course only too glad to be in no way a difficulty to my hosts, so I wrote at once both to Mrs Payne, suggesting the date named, and to mother, telling her what I had done in the matter. And all came to pass in accordance with our plan. The following Friday found me driving across the park to the rather sombre but stately square where the Paynes had lived for many years. CHAPTER ELEVEN. GRANVILLE SQUARE. It was to some extent a new phase of London life, even with my small experience of it, to which I was introduced at Granville Square. The Paynes were open, as Lady Bretton had said, to a mild charge of "old-fashionedness" perhaps. Of this, save for my time with my godmother, I might scarcely have been conscious, but as things were, it added a certain interest, almost charm, to my days with them. From the first I felt thoroughly at home; the whole atmosphere was in many ways home-like to me. For, to begin with, there was no daughter of the house, and the two sons at home on my first arrival were, or at least seemed to me, decidedly my juniors. The younger of them was very distinctly so, for he was the baby of the family, still at a day-school in London, and Rupert, my old acquaintance, though literally about my own age, I looked upon as much younger. In those days I think the feeling was more marked than at present, of girls arriving at maturity more quickly than their young men contemporaries.