I stared at Jack, not knowing how to take this exclamation.  The few Englishmen I met when mamma and I were together, or when I lived with the Milvaines, were rather fond of using that ejaculation when it was apparently quite irrelevant.  If you told a youthful Englishman that you were not allowed to walk or bicycle alone in the Bois, he was as likely as not to say “My aunt!” In fact, whatever surprised him was apt to elicit this cry.  I have known several young men who gave vent to it at intervals of from half to three-quarters of an hour; but I had never before heard Jack make the exclamation, so when I had looked at him and he had looked at me in an emotional kind of silence for a few seconds, I asked him, “Why ’My aunt’?”

“Because she is my aunt.”

“Surely not my Miss Paget?”

“I should think it highly improbable that your Miss Paget and my Miss Paget could be the same, if you hadn’t mentioned her bulldog, Beau.  There can’t be a quantity of Miss Pagets going about the world with bulldogs named Beau.  Only my Miss Paget never does go about the world.  She hates travelling.”

“So does mine.  She said that being in a train was no pursuit for a gentlewoman.”

“That sounds like her.  She’s quite mad.”

“She seemed very kind.”

“I’m glad she did—­to you.  She has seemed rather the contrary to me.”

“Oh, what did she do to you?”

“Did her best to spoil my life, that’s all—­with the best intentions, no doubt.  Still, by Jove, I thank her!  If it hadn’t been for my aunt I should never have seen—­my sister.”

“Thank you.  You’re always kind—­and polite.  Do you mean it was because of her you took to what you call ’shuvving’?”

“Exactly.”

“But I thought—­I thought—­”

“What?”

“I—­don’t dare tell you.”

“I should think you might know by this time that you can tell me anything.  You must tell me!”

“I thought it was the beautiful lady who was with you the first time you saw the battlement garden at Beaucaire, who ruined your life?”

“Beautiful lady—­battlement garden?  Good heavens, what extraordinary things we seem to have been thinking about each other:  I with my man in England; you with your beautiful lady—­”

“She’s a different thing.  You talked to me about her,” I insisted.  “Surely you must remember?”

“I remember the conversation perfectly.  I didn’t explain my meaning as a professor demonstrates a rule in higher mathematics, but I thought you couldn’t help understanding well enough, especially a vain little thing like you.”

“I, vain?  Oh!”

“You are, aren’t you?”

“I—­well, I’m afraid I am, a little.”