And only the other evening I sat at dinner next to the Dowager Countess. Heavens! what a beautiful creature she still is, with her prematurely white hair and her long thick neck! And after dinner we talked of Barty--she with that delightful frankness that always characterized her through life, I am told: "Dear Barty Josselin! how desperately in love I was with that man, to be sure! Everybody was--he might have thrown the handkerchief as he pleased in Riffrath, I can tell you, Sir Robert! He was the handsomest man I ever saw, and wore a black pork-pie hat and a little yellow Vandyck beard and mustache; just the color of Turkish tobacco, like his hair! All that sounds odd now, doesn't it? Fashions have changed--but not for the better! And what a figure! and such fun he was! and always in such good spirits, poor boy! and now he's dead, and it's one of the greatest names in all the world! Well, if he'd thrown that handkerchief at me just about then, I should have picked it up--and you're welcome to tell all the world so, Sir Robert!" * * * * * And next day I got a kind and pretty little letter: "Dear Sir Robert,--I was quite serious last night. Barty Josselin was _mes premières amours_! Whether he ever guessed it or not, I can't say. If not, he was very obtuse! Perhaps he feared to fall, and didn't feel fain to climb in consequence. I all but proposed to him, in fact! Anyhow, I am proud my girlish fancy should have fallen on such a man! "I told him so myself only last year, and we had a good laugh over old times; and then I told his wife, and she seemed much pleased. I can understand his preference, and am old enough to forgive it and laugh--although there is even now a tear in the laughter. You know his daughter, Julia Mainwaring, is my godchild; sometimes she sings her father's old songs to me: "'Petit chagrin de notre enfance Coûte un soupir!' "Do you remember? "Poor Ironsides knew all about it when he married me, and often declared I had amply made up to him for that and many other things--over and over again. Il avait bien raison; and made of me a very happy wife and a most unhappy widow. "Put this in your book, if you like. "Sincerely yours, "Julia Ironsides." Thus time flowed smoothly and pleasantly for Barty all through the summer. In August the Royces left, and also Captain Reece--they for Scotland, he for Algiers--and appointed to meet again in Riffrath next spring. In October Lady Caroline took her niece to Rome, and Barty was left behind to his work, very much to her grief and Daphne's. He wrote to them every Monday, and always got a letter back on the Saturday following.