He seemed to favour notorieties. Hearing that I was the playwright he came to me, and, on the next seat’s being left unoccupied, sat there and watched. He dispersed a rich smell of violets--it was said that his skin by some artificial means had been impregnated lastingly with their odour. When the play was done I bade him to a supper I had made for the actors; and there, though his language savoured of the empiric, he discoursed most interestingly, particularly on antipathies: in France he said he had kept a mistress who fainted at the sight of velvet; and even if it were drawn over her face in sleep she would instantly fall into convulsions. This, and such-like information, kept us together till late in the morning. On parting he entreated me to visit him at his house at Hampstead, where, he told me, the Lady Millicent was lying. I kept my own counsel about our former meeting, thinking it might give him some displeasure. On the morrow I went, to find Sir Humphreville away from home, but expected shortly. I was shown into his library, a spacious chamber, lighted by a louvre of many-coloured glass, and lined with a collection of books such as I had never seen before in the house of a private gentleman. It consisted chiefly of modern poets and dramatists, memoirs in divers foreign languages, works on witchcraft, chemistry, and astrology: on the whole being of more pretence than worth. As I took up a new copy of Michael Scott’s _Quaestio Curiosa de Natura Solis et Lunae_, I heard the rustling of a woman’s gown, and turning, saw Lady Millicent gazing at me with a mirthful face. She was much changed. As a child she had seemed sad and fantastic, now at twenty-four she had developed into a woman of heavenly beauty. Her face was white as snow, an admirable oval; her grey eyes clearer than crystal; her hair, which had not, as hair is wont, changed with the passage of years, fell in heavy curls down her back and over her bosom, held from her brow by an ornament of pearls. ‘So we meet again,’ she said. ‘You were my fairy prince. I almost doubted that you had ever really existed. It is very sweet to find you here. When they brought your name to me, years seemed to roll away. Ay me, for those long past days at Dorel’s Park!’ she sighed. Somehow her words brought back the hollowness of my manhood. Would that we two were children again! That once more I might run through the Park, where the jetto played and the squirrels squeaked, and the stately little maid kissed me. Lady Millicent noted my depression. ‘Childhood is sweeter than barren knowledge,’ she said in a low tone. ‘For one year of unalloyed happiness I would sell all the rest of my life.’