Honestly, I knew not what to say. I was not asked to sympathise,
having already revealed my politics, and yet the case cried out
for sympathy. You remember, my dear aunt, the good Lady Culham,
who was our Dorsetshire neighbour, and tried hard to mend my ways
at Carteron? This poor Duchess--for so she called herself--was
just such another. A woman made for comfort, housewifery, and
motherhood, and by no means for racing about Europe in charge of
a disreputable parent. I could picture her settled equably on a
garden seat with a lapdog and needlework, blinking happily over
green lawns and mildly rating an errant gardener. I could fancy
her sitting in a summer parlour, very orderly and dainty, writing
lengthy epistles to a tribe of nieces. I could see her
marshalling a household in the family pew, or riding serenely in
the family coach behind fat bay horses. But here, on an inn
staircase, with a false name and a sad air of mystery, she was
woefully out of place. I noted little wrinkles forming in the
corners of her eyes, and the ravages of care beginning in the
plump rosiness of her face. Be sure there was nothing appealing
in her mien. She spoke with the air of a great lady, to whom the
world is matter only for an afterthought. It was the facts that
appealed and grew poignant from her courage.

"There is another claim upon your good nature," she said.
"Doubtless you were awoke last night by Oliphant's playing upon
the pipes. I rebuked the landlord for his insolence in
protesting, but to you, a gentleman and a friend, an explanation
is due. My father sleeps ill, and your conversation seems to
have cast him into a train of sad memories. It has been his
habit on such occasions to have the pipes played to him, since