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 might be allowed to salute her ladyship. The baroness only nodded her head. In a minute or two Baron Mundy entered, kissed his mother, and, looking at her for a moment, said, “You don’t seem to be quite well, mother.”

“I don’t think I am quite myself to-day, dear Mundy; that it is only the heat that has knocked me up a little. It is quite unbearable to-day.”

“Did you send for the doctor?”

“What for? The evening coolness is near now, and will set me all right again.”

“I am so sorry, mother, to find you not well. I had no idea of anything being the matter, and have been looking forward so much to seeing you again, after many weeks of absence; and now I find you like this.”

The baroness fixed her eyes sharply upon her son, and said with particular stress and meaning, “That is just the fate of man, dear Mundy, that we imagine one another to be quite different from what we really are.”

Mundy changed colour slightly.

The baroness, who still kept her eyes fixed on him, saw it plainly. Then she said, “Perhaps you had better ring for a glass of fresh water for me.”