Then, as every one was going, he said: “I am awfully glad to have met you--we must be pals, for the sake of old times,” and he gave me his card for me to keep his address, and told me if ever I wanted a friend to send him a line, Colonel Tom Carden, The Albany. I promised I would. “You might give me away at my wedding,” I said, gaily. “I am thinking of getting married, some day!” “That I will,” he promised, “and, by Jove, the man will be a fortunate fellow.” Lady Ver and I drove after luncheon--we paid some calls, and went in to tea with the Montgomeries, who had just arrived at Brown’s Hotel for a week’s shopping. “Aunt Katherine brings those poor girls up always at this time, and takes them to some impossible old dressmaker of her own, in the day, and to Shakespeare, or a concert, at night, and returns with them equipped in more hideous garments each year. It is positively cruel,” said Lady Ver, as we went up the stairs to their _appartement_. There they were, sitting round the tea-table, just as at Tryland. Kirstie and Jean embroidering and knitting, and the other two reading new catalogues of books for their work!!! Lady Ver began to tease them. She asked them all sorts of questions about their new frocks, and suggested they had better go to Paris, once in a way. Lady Katherine was like ice. She strongly disapproved of my being with her niece, one could see. The connection with the family, she hoped, would be ended with my visit to Tryland. Malcolm was arriving in town, too, we gathered, and Lady Ver left a message to ask him to dine to-night. Then we got away. “If one of those lumps of suet had a spark of spirit, it would go straight to the devil,” Lady Ver said, as we went down the stairs. “Think of it! ties and altar-cloths in London! Mercifully they could not dine to-night. I had to ask them, and they generally come once while they are up--the four girls and Aunt Katherine--and it is with the greatest difficulty I can collect four young men for them if they get the least hint who they are to meet. I generally secure a couple of socially budding Jews, because I feel the subscriptions for their charities, which they will pester whoever they do sit next for, are better filched from the Hebrew, than from some pretty needy guardsman. Oh, what a life!” She was so kind to me on the way back; she said she hated leaving me alone on the morrow, and that I must settle now what I was going to do, or she would not go. I said I would go to Claridge’s where Mrs. Carruthers and I had always stayed, and remain perfectly quietly alone with Véronique. I could afford it for a week. So we drove there, and made the arrangement. “It is absolutely impossible for you to go on like this, dear child,” she said. “You must have a chaperon; you are far too pretty to stay alone in a hotel. What _can_ I do for you?”