“I am so glad it is you,” she said as she shook hands with Lilias. “I was so afraid it might be some other Miss Western, though the name is uncommon, not like Weston. Do you know what I did? Fancy anything so stupid! I lost your address, which you remember I noted down on a bit of paper in Dr —’s waiting-room. I could not remember the name of the friends you were staying with, and of course hunting for you in all the hotels in London would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack. And I have so little time, I am always so hurried to get back to Anselm when I am out. It was not till the day before we left town that it occurred to me to try to trace you through Dr —, and when I went to his house for the purpose, he was off to the country! Oh! you don’t know how vexed I was.”
“And how did you find me out here?” asked Lilias, a little bewildered by Mrs Brabazon’s unconcealed eagerness to prosecute the acquaintance so unexpectedly begun.
“By the local paper—the visitor’s guide, or whatever they call it. Of course I was not looking for you, I had no reason to suppose you were here; but the moment I saw the name Western I felt sure it must be you, and Anselm felt sure that Greville was the name of your friends. It really seems quite—what people call providential, though, somehow, I never like using the expression in that way.”
“And how is your nephew—young Mr Brooke?” said Lilias.
Mrs Brabazon shook her head.
“It is Basil over again—ah, it is heart-breaking work,” she said, sadly. “But I forget, I am speaking to you as if you knew all about us.”
“Somehow I feel as if I did,” said Lilias, “the familiar names—one of my brothers is Basil, and another Anselm Brooke, but we call him Brooke always.”
“And which is Basil?”
“The eldest,” said Lilias. “He has got a berth, as he calls it, in an office in the city. It is a good opening, I believe, and he will probably be sent out to India in a year or two. But in the mean time, of course, he gets very little, and—and it keeps us very strait at home,” she added, with a smile.
Mrs Brabazon listened with unfeigned interest.