Three months after the affair the regiment was ordered down
to Allahabad, and the change of place no doubt helped to erase all
memory of the dream. Four years after we had left Jubbalpore we
went to Beerapore. The time is very marked in my memory, because,
the very week we arrived there, your aunt, then Miss Gardiner,
came out from England, to her father, our colonel. The instant I
saw her I was impressed with the idea that I knew her intimately.
I recollected her face, her figure, and the very tone of her voice,
but wherever I had met her I could not conceive. Upon the occasion
of my first introduction to her I could not help telling her that
I was convinced that we had met, and asking her if she did not
remember it. No, she did not remember, but very likely she might
have done so, and she suggested the names of several people at whose
houses we might have met. I did not know any of them. Presently
she asked how long I had been out in India?
"'Six years,' I said.
"'And how old, Mr. Harley,' she said, 'do you take me to be?'
"I saw in one instant my stupidity, and was stammering out an
apology, when she went on:
"'I am very little over eighteen, Mr. Harley, although I evidently
look ever so many years older; but papa can certify to my age; so
I was only twelve when you left England.
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