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“Your sweet daughter,” she said, when the Professor had been presented to her, “has eased my pain already. I think she must be an angel sent to me by Heaven.”

“She is an angel,” said Sir Dinadan, emphatically, so that his mother looked at him curiously. Miss Baffin blushed.

“Angels, my lady, do not come with porous plasters,” said the Professor, smiling.

“I love her already, whether she is angel or woman,” replied Lady Bors, patting Miss Baffin’s arm.

“So do—,” Sir Dinadan did not complete the sentence. It occurred to him that he might perhaps be getting a little too demonstrative.

“The Lady Tilly,” said the Baroness, “has told me something of the adventure which brought you here. Will you be so courteous as to tell us more, and to inform us of that strange and wonderful land from which you have come?”

“Willingly, madam,” replied the Professor. And so, while the meal was in progress, the Professor,—not neglecting the food, for he was really hungry,—tried, in the plainest language he could command, to convey to the minds of his hearers some notion of the marvels of modern civilization. The Baron, Lady Bors, and Sir Dinadan asked many questions, and they more than once expressed the greatest astonishment at the revelations made in the Professor’s narrative.