Two days later, he was fortunate enough (so he said) to find himself in a group of which she was a member, in the grounds of an historic house in Kensington--not South Kensington: it will be a hundred years or more before there are historic houses in South Kensington. But in this house a great statesman had once lived--a century has passed since there was a great statesman in England--and before the birth of the statesman, a great Man of Letters had, by a singular mischance of marriage, also lived in the same house--according to some critics a hundred years have passed since there was a great Man of Letters in England. Josephine was once again on a terrace--one with an Italian balustrade overlooking a lawn and the little park that surrounded the historic house--when Clifton saw her. He had no difficulty getting into the group of dull celebrities, to whom she had been introduced by her father--dull peers whose names figured largely on the first page--the title page it should properly be called--of prospectuses; and deadly dull representatives of county families who had never done anything but represent the county; a moderately dull judge or two, an immoderately dull Indian lieutenant-governor (retired), and a representative of literature. (The last named had been invited in sympathy with the traditions of the house; and indeed it was a matter of tradition that this literary link with the past had written the most illiterate volume of verse that had ever remained unread by the public.) Josephine suffered herself to be detached from this fascinating group after a time, but resisted the temptations of a tent with moselle cup and _pâté de foie gras_ sandwiches which Ernest held before her dazzled eyes. They stood together at the top of the steps leading from the terrace to the lawn, and they talked, not of the Great Statesman but of the Great Literary Man. His writings have the boracic quality of wit to keep them ever fresh. “To think that he stood here, just where we are standing,” said Josephine. “To think that he looked at those very trees. He went to live on the Fulham Road afterwards. Why did he not remain here, I wonder?” “You see his wife was here,” said Mr. Clifton with the air of the one who explains. “Ah--perhaps,” laughed Josephine. “I came upon a letter of his the other day in a magazine--a letter written from his cottage on the Fulham Road to his stepson, who lived here, asking him to come to hear the nightingale that sung every night in one of the lanes.” “There are other places besides the lanes off the Fulham Road where one may listen to the song of the nightingale nowadays,” said Mr. Clifton. “His example should be a warning to a man not to marry beneath him,” remarked Josephine. “Yes, it was rather a come down for him, wasn’t it?” said her companion. “He lived in a garret off the Haymarket, didn’t he?--and his wife brought him here.”