“Yes—and cried—for all the evil I had done you, I suppose.... I’ve often thought of it since.”... Lady Osprey stopped for us to overtake her. “My dear!” she said to Beatrice. “Such a beautiful gallery!” Then she stared very hard at me, puzzled in the most naked fashion to understand who I might be. “People say the oak staircase is rather good,” said my aunt, and led the way. Lady Osprey, with her skirts gathered for the ascent to the gallery and her hand on the newel, turned and addressed a look full of meaning overflowing indeed with meanings—at her charge. The chief meaning no doubt was caution about myself, but much of it was just meaning at large. I chanced to catch the response in a mirror and detected Beatrice with her nose wrinkled into a swift and entirely diabolical grimace. Lady Osprey became a deeper shade of pink and speechless with indignation—it was evident she disavowed all further responsibility, as she followed my aunt upstairs. “It’s dark, but there’s a sort of dignity,” said Beatrice very distinctly, regarding the hall with serene tranquillity, and allowing the unwilling feet on the stairs to widen their distance from us. She stood a step up, so that she looked down a little upon me and over me at the old hall. She turned upon me abruptly when she thought her step-mother was beyond ear-shot. “But how did you get here?” she asked. “Here?” “All this.” She indicated space and leisure by a wave of the hand at hall and tall windows and sunlit terrace. “Weren’t you the housekeeper’s son?” “I’ve adventured. My uncle has become—a great financier. He used to be a little chemist about twenty miles from Bladesover. We’re promoters now, amalgamators, big people on the new model.” “I understand.” She regarded me with interested eyes, visibly thinking me out. “And you recognised me?” I asked. “After a second or so. I saw you recognised me. I couldn’t place you, but I knew I knew you. Then Archie being there helped me to remember.” “I’m glad to meet again,” I ventured. “I’d never forgotten you.” “One doesn’t forget those childish things.” We regarded one another for a moment with a curiously easy and confident satisfaction in coming together again. I can’t explain our ready zest in one another. The thing was so. We pleased each other, we had no doubt in our minds that we pleased each other. From the first we were at our ease with one another. “So picturesque, so very picturesque,” came a voice from above, and then: “Bee-atrice!” “I’ve a hundred things I want to know about you,” she said with an easy intimacy, as we went up the winding steps.... As the four of us sat at tea together under the cedar on the terrace she asked questions about my aeronautics. My aunt helped with a word or so about my broken ribs. Lady Osprey evidently regarded flying as a most indesirable and improper topic—a blasphemous intrusion upon the angels. “It isn’t flying,” I explained. “We don’t fly yet.”