“Are you,” she had asked me, “the son of the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry? Indeed! I am told your father is a most charming man. He is having a splendid holiday just now.”

A few days earlier we had heard, in a letter from Mamma, that my father and his friend M. de Norpois had lost their luggage.

“It has been found; as a matter of fact, it was never really lost, I can tell you what happened,” explained Mme. de Villeparisis, who, without our knowing how, seemed to be far better informed than ourselves of the course of my father’s travels. “I think your father is now planning to come home earlier, next week, in fact, as he will probably give up the idea of going to Algeçiras. But he is anxious to devote a day longer to Toledo; it seems, he is an admirer of a pupil of Titian⁠—I forget the name⁠—whose work can only be seen properly there.”