. . .After my aunt had replied courteously enough to a few commonplace observations, she gave one of her ominous coughs, and I trembled for the result.

"Captain Beville," said my aunt. "I think I once knew a family of your name in Hampshire—the New Forest, if I remember rightly."

"Excuse me," said Frank, nowise disconcerted, and with a sly glance at me, "my name is Lovell."

"Oh," replied my aunt, with a considerable assumption of stateliness, "then—ahem!—Captain Greville, I don't think I have ever had the pleasure of meeting you before."

And my aunt looked as if she didn't care whether she ever met him again. This would have been a "poser" to most people; but Frank applied himself diligently to his hat, and opened the trenches in his own way.

"The fact is, Miss Horsingham," said he, "that I have taken advantage of my intimacy with your nephew to call upon you without a . . . Read More