assured her.

"It is very kind of you to say so," sighed Sir William's cousin, but
without conviction; "I am afraid sometimes I bore people."

The polite stranger refrained from contradiction.

"You see," continued the poor lady, "I really am of good family."

"Dear lady," said the stranger, "your gentle face, your gentle voice,
your gentle bearing, all proclaim it."

She looked without flinching into the stranger's eyes, and gradually a
smile banished the reigning dulness of her features.

"How foolish of me." She spoke rather to herself than to the
stranger. "Why, of course, people--people whose opinion is worth
troubling about--judge of you by what you are, not by what you go
about saying you are."

The stranger remained silent.

"I am the widow of a provincial doctor, with an income of just two
hundred and thirty pounds per annum," she argued. "The sensible thing
for me to do is to make the best of it, and to worry myself about
these high and mighty relations of mine as little as they have ever
worried themselves about me."

The stranger appeared unable to think of anything worth saying.