! and yet I am quite sure I should have remembered
it if we had met before in town this year."

"Is it so very odd?" asked Mary, laughing; "London is a very
large place; it seems very natural that two people should be able
to live in it for a long time without meeting."

"Indeed, you are quite mistaken. You will find out very soon how
small London is--at least how small society is, and you will get
to know every face quite well--I mean the face of everyone in
society."

"You must have a wonderful memory!"

"Yes, I have a good memory for faces, and, by the way, I am sure
I have seen you before; but not in town, and I cannot remember
where. But it is not at all necessary to have a memory to know
everybody in society by sight; you meet every night almost; and
altogether there are only two or three hundred faces to remember.
And then there is something in the look of people, and the way
they come into a room or stand about, which tells you at once
whether they are amongst those whom you need  yourself
about."

"Well, I cannot understand it. I seem to