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 "Captain Templeton!" exclaimed Mrs, Hopkinson, jumping up in her turn, "you don't mean to say, Lady Chester, that your husband is that Captain Templeton who was the life and soul of the 'Alert' till he caught that bad fever which carried off so many of John's best hands. Goodness me! why John talked of nothing else when he came home from that voyage! I thought I should have dropped off my chair sometimes with laughing at some of Captain Templeton's jokes: and he came to see John when we were at Southsea—found him out though John was at home only for three weeks—and was so friendly, and shook hands with me, and said John was a capital fellow, which to be sure he is. And to think that he should be Lord Chester—and that you should be Lady Chester, and sitting in that wet arbour! That is a curious coincidence!"

Mrs. Hopkinson's ideas on the subject of coincidences were rather vague and ungrammatical, but Blanche was not disposed to be critical; and when Aileen came up to say