e been a beastly business, don't you know, if you HAD been
called upon to produce it again--ha, ha!--eh?"

Returning to the dining room, Randolph found Miss Avondale alone on a
corner of the sofa. She swept her skirts aside as he approached, as an
invitation for him to sit beside her. Still sore from his experience,
he accepted only in the hope that she was about to confide to him her
opinion of this strange story. But, to his chagrin, she looked at him
over her fan with a mischievous tolerance. "You seemed more interested
in the cousin than the brother of your patron."

Once Randolph might have been flattered at this. But her speech
seemed to him only an echo of the general heartlessness. "I found Miss
Eversleigh very sympathetic over the fate of the unfortunate man, whom
nobody else here seems to care for," said Randolph coldly.

"Yes," returned Miss Avondale composedly; "I believe she was a great
friend of Captain Dornton when she was quite a child, and I don't think
she can expect much from Sir William, who is very different from his
brother. In fact, she was one of the relatives who came over here in
quest of the captain, when it was believed he was living and the heir.
He was quite a patron of hers."

"But was he not also one of yours?" said Randolph bluntly.

"I think I told you I was the friend of the boy and of poor Paquita, the
boy's mother," said Miss Avondale quietly. "I never saw Captain Dornton
but twice."

Randolph noticed that she had not said "wife," although in her previous
confidences she had so described the mother. But, as Dingwall had said,
why should she have exposed the boy's illegitimacy to a comparative
stranger; and if she herself had been deceived about it, why should he
expect her to tell him? And yet--he was not satisfied.

He was startled by a little laugh. "Well, I declare, you look as if
you resented the fact that your benefactor had turned out to be a
baronet--just as in some novel--and that you have rendered a service
to the English aristocracy. If you are thinking of poor Bobby," she
continued, without the slightest show of self-consciousness, "Sir
William will provide for him, and thinks of taking him to England to
restore his health. Now"--with her smiling, tolerant superiority--"you
must go and talk to Miss Eversleigh. I see her looking this way, and I
don't think she half likes me as it is."

Randolph, who, however, also saw that Sir William was lounging toward
them, here