After so many delays, Uncle Cornelius now plunged almost hurriedly into his narration.
“In the year 1820,” he said, “in the month of August, I fell in love.” Here the girls glanced at each other. The idea of Uncle Cornie in love, and in the very same century in which they were now listening to the confession, was too astonishing to pass without ocular remark; but, if he observed it, he took no notice of it; he did not even pause. “In the month of September, I was refused. Consequently, in the month of October, I was ready to fall in love again. Take particular care of yourself, Harry, for a whole month, at least, after your first disappointment; for you will never be more likely to do a foolish thing. Please yourself after the second. If you are silly then, you may take what you get, for you will deserve it—except it be good fortune.”
“Did you do a foolish thing then, uncle?” asked Harry, demurely.
“I did, as you will see; for I fell in love again.”
“I don’t see anything so very foolish in that.”
“I have repented it since, though. Don’t interrupt me again, please. In the middle of October, then, in the year 1820, in the evening, I was walking across Russell Square, on my way home from the British Museum, where I had been reading all day. You see I have a full intention of being precise, Janet.”
“I’m sure I don’t know why you make the remark to me, uncle,” said Janet, with an involuntary toss of her head. Her uncle only went on with his narrative.
“I begin at the very beginning of my story,” he said; “for I want to be particular as to everything that can appear to have had anything to do with what came afterwards. I had been reading, I say, all the morning in the British Museum; and, as I walked, I took off my spectacles to ease my eyes. I need not tell you that I am shortsighted now, for that you know well enough. But I must tell you that I was shortsighted then, and helpless enough without my spectacles, although I was not quite so much so as I am now;—for I find it all nonsense about shortsighted eyes improving with age. Well, I was walking along the south side of Russell Square, with my spectacles in my hand, and feeling a little bewildered in consequence—for it was quite the dusk of the evening, and shortsighted people require more light than others. I was feeling, in fact, almost blind. I had got more than halfway to the other side, when, from the crossing that cuts off the corner in the direction of Montagu Place, just as I was about to turn towards it, an old lady stepped upon the kerbstone of the pavement, looked at me for a moment, and passed—an occurrence not very remarkable, certainly. But the lady was remarkable, and so was her dress. I am not good at observing, and I am still worse at describing dress, therefore I can only say that hers reminded me of an old picture—that is, I had never seen anything like it, except in old pictures. She had no bonnet, and looked as if she had walked straight out of an ancient drawing-room in her evening attire. Of her face I shall say nothing now. The next instant I met a man on the crossing, who stopped and addressed me. So shortsighted was I that, although I recognised his voice as one I ought to know, I could not identify him until I had put on my spectacles, which I did instinctively in the act of returning his greeting. At the same moment I glanced over my shoulder after the old lady. She was nowhere to be seen.
“ ‘What are you looking at?’ asked James Hetheridge.
“ ‘I was looking after that old lady,’ I answered, ‘but I can’t see her.’
“ ‘What old lady?’ said Hetheridge, with just a touch of impatience.
“ ‘You must have seen her,’ I returned. ‘You were not more than three yards behind her.’
“ ‘Where is she then?’
“ ‘She must have gone down one of the areas, I think. But she looked a lady, though an old-fashioned one.’
“ ‘Have you been dining?’ asked James, in a tone of doubtful inquiry.
“ ‘No,’ I replied, not suspecting the insinuation; ‘I have only just come from the Museum.’
“ ‘Then I advise you to call on your medical man before you go home.’
“ ‘Medical man!’ I returned; ‘I have no medical man. What do you mean? I never was better in my life.’
“ ‘I mean that there was no old lady. It was an illusion, and that indicates something wrong. Besides, you did not know me when I spoke to you.’
“ ‘That is nothing,’ I returned. ‘I had just taken off my spectacles, and without them I shouldn’t know my own father.’
“ ‘How was it you saw the old lady, then?’
“The affair was growing serious under my friend’s cross-questioning. I did not at all like the idea of his supposing me subject to hallucinations. So I answered, with a laugh, ‘Ah! to be sure, that explains it. I am so blind without my spectacles, that I shouldn’t know an old lady from a big dog.’
“ ‘There was no big dog,’ said Hetheridge, shaking his head, as the fact for the first time dawned upon me that, although I had seen the old lady clearly enough to make a sketch of her, even to the features of her careworn, eager old face, I had not been able to recognise the well-known countenance of James Hetheridge.
“ ‘That’s what comes of reading till the optic nerve is weakened,’ he went on. ‘You will cause yourself serious injury if you do not pull up in time. I’ll tell you what; I’m going home next week—will you go with me?’
“ ‘You are very kind,’ I answered, not altogether rejecting the proposal, for I felt that a little change
