Something in this caused Mr. Torrens to say, with ridiculous inconsecutiveness:--"Then you're not engaged to Lord Cumberworld?" "I certainly am _not_ engaged to Lord Cumberworld," said Gwen with cold emphasis. "Why did you think I was?" "Mrs. Bailey." "Mrs. Bailey! And why did you think I wasn't?" "That requires thought. I don't quite see, now I come to think of it, why a lady shouldn't be engaged to a party and speak about his grandma as ..." "As I spoke of his just now? Why not, indeed? She _is_ a dowager-duchess." "I admit it. But there are ways and ways of calling people dowager-duchesses. It struck me that your way suggested that there was something ridiculous about ... about _dowadging_." "So there is--to me. I believe it arose from the newspaper saying, when we had a ball in London for me to come out, that the Dowager Lady Scamander had a magnificent diamond stomacher. Perhaps you don't happen to know the shape of that good lady?... Never mind. Anyhow, I am _not_ engaged to this one's grandson; and she's safe in the west wing, where the ghost never goes. We've got it all to ourselves. Go on!" "My first idea was how to prevent Europe and Asia finding it out and frightening my family, at least until my eyes had had time to turn round. The next voice I heard was the doctor's, summoned, I suppose, by Mrs. Bailey. It was cheerful, and said that was good hearing, and now we should do. He said:--'You lie quiet, Mr. Torrens, and I'll tell you what it all was; because I daresay you don't know, and would like to.' I said yes--very much. So he told me the story in a comfortable optimist way--said it was a loss of blood from the occipital artery that had made such a wreck of me, but that a contusion of the head had been the cause of the insensibility, which had nearly stopped the action of the heart, else I might have bled to death...." "Oh, how white you were when we found you!" Gwen exclaimed--"So terribly white! But I half think I can see how it happened. Your heart stopped pumping the blood out, because you were stunned, and that gave the artery a chance to pull itself together. That's the sort of idea Dr. Merridew gave me, with the long words left out."