"Yes," answered Hardy, "and now that I've got the bearings of you, I don't need to ask if your name is James Smedley."
They clasped hands.
"Let me introduce you," said Hardy, "to Miss Julia Armstrong, daughter of Commander Armstrong, late of the Royal Navy. Captain Smedley, of the Glamis Castle, Miss Armstrong."
"How did you know that?" asked Smedley, exchanging a bow with the girl, whose peculiar grace of form, whose charm of movement, whose face, romantic and pleading, with the gifts of nature and the passions of her heart, his swift eye was observing with pleasure and curiosity.
"I am stopping in the house you're lodging in," answered Hardy, "and Mrs. Brierley told me who you were. Are you going to dine here?"
"Yes."
"Is that your wife?"
"Yes."
"Bring her across, Smedley, and we'll make a dinner party."
Mrs. Smedley had been bobbing to catch a view of Miss Armstrong, and the bugles in her bonnet twinkled like fireflies as she swayed her head.