however, of taking my remark in that sense, unless any inference can be
drawn from her saying, "Oh, he's a widower?"

"He's a widower of forty, or a year or two more--and he's got a son of
about seventeen--a very good-looking lad. His sister, Lady Sarah Lacey,
keeps house for him, and according to local gossip is a bit of a shrew."

She began to laugh as she said with a mock sigh, "One's too old for me,
and the other's too young--they must look somewhere else, I'm afraid!
And then--how should I get on with the shrew? I'm rather a shrew
myself--at least I've been told so."

"You'd better let them alone," I counseled her with a smile.

"Oh, no, I shan't do that," she rejoined with a decisiveness which I
began to recognize as an occasional feature of her speech. "It'll be
more amusing to see what they're like--presently. And what of the
Dormers? My father mentioned them."

"A very nice old couple--but I fear he's failing."

A slight grimace dismissed the Dormers as not holding much interest for
her.

"Oh, you won't want for neighbors. There are plenty of them, and they'll
all be tremendously excited about you and will flock to call as soon as
you can receive them."

"It must seem funny to them. I suppose they'd never heard of me?"

"I don't believe any of them had. Your father had no intimates, unless
Mr. Cartmell can be called one. Besides--well, I'd never heard of you
myself!"

"And here we are old friends!" she said graciously.

"That's very kind--but you mustn't think yourself bound to take over the
secretary with the rest of the furniture."

She looked steadily in my face for several seconds, seeming to size me
up--if I may be allowed the expression. Then she smiled--not gayly, yet
again by no means sadly. It was the smile which I came to call later her
mystery smile; and, as a general rule, it meant--in plain
language--mischief. Of course, on this first day I did not attach these
associations to it. It struck me as merely rather curious; as a man
talks to himself, so she seemed to smile to herself, forgetting her
interlocutor.

"Oh, well--stay and see how you like me," she said.

CHAPTER III

ON THE USE OF SCRAPES

We were settling down. It was a week since the funeral. The borough and
the neighborhood had survived their first stupefaction at the apparition
of Miss Driver; the local journals had achieved their articles, organs
of wider circulation and greater dignity their paragraphs; the