Before three months were up she was the rage of London--leastways of the music-hall part of it--with her portrait in all the shop windows, and interviews with her in half the newspapers. It seems she was the daughter of an officer who had died in India when she was a baby, and the niece of a bishop somewhere in Australia. He was dead too. There didn't seem to be any of her ancestry as wasn't dead, but they had all been swells. She had been educated privately, she had, by a relative; and had early displayed an aptitude for dancing, though her friends at first had much opposed her going upon the stage. There was a lot more of it--you know the sort of thing. Of course, she was a connection of one of our best known judges--they all are--and she merely acted in order to support a grandmother, or an invalid sister, I forget which. A wonderful talent for swallowing, these newspaper chaps has, some of 'em! “Kipper” never touched a penny of her money, but if he had been her agent at twenty-five per cent. he couldn't have worked harder, and he just kept up the hum about her, till if you didn't want to hear anything more about Caroline Trevelyan, your only chance would have been to lie in bed, and never look at a newspaper. It was Caroline Trevelyan at Home, Caroline Trevelyan at Brighton, Caroline Trevelyan and the Shah of Persia, Caroline Trevelyan and the Old Apple-woman. When it wasn't Caroline Trevelyan herself it would be Caroline Trevelyan's dog as would be doing something out of the common, getting himself lost or summoned or drowned--it didn't matter much what. I moved from Oxford Street to the new “Horseshoe” that year--it had just been rebuilt--and there I saw a good deal of them, for they came in to lunch there or supper pretty regular. Young “Kipper”--or the “Captain” as everybody called him--gave out that he was her half-brother. “I'ad to be some sort of a relation, you see,” he explained to me. “I'd a' been 'er brother out and out; that would have been simpler, only the family likeness wasn't strong enough. Our styles o' beauty ain't similar.” They certainly wasn't. “Why don't you marry her?” I says, “and have done with it?” He looked thoughtful at that. “I did think of it,” he says, “and I know, jolly well, that if I 'ad suggested it 'fore she'd found herself, she'd have agreed, but it don't seem quite fair now.” “How d'ye mean fair?” I says. “Well, not fair to 'er,” he says. “I've got on all right, in a small way; but she--well, she can just 'ave 'er pick of the nobs. There's one on 'em as I've made inquiries about. 'E'll be a dock, if a kid pegs out as is expected to, and anyhow 'e'll be a markis, and 'e means the straight thing--no errer. It ain't fair for me to stand in 'er way.” “Well,” I says, “you know your own business, but it seems to me she wouldn't have much way to stand in if it hadn't been for you.”