te and her smart costume.

"Luckily I'm not curious--and I can trust you to do nothing wrong."

"Well, I suppose so," she agreed with scornful composure. "Did you ever
hear mother speak of a Mrs Fitzhubert?"

The major smiled under his heavy mustache as he answered, "Never."

"Well, I have," said Mina with a world of significance. "I heard her
first through the door," she added with a candid smile. "I was
listening."

"You often were in those days."

"Oh, I am still--but on the inside of the door now. And she told me
about it afterward of her own accord. But it wouldn't interest you,
uncle."

"Not in its present stage of revelation," he agreed, with a little yawn.

"The funny old Englishman--you never saw him, did you?--Mr
Cholderton--he knew her. He rather admired her too. He was there when
she rushed in and---- Never mind! I was there too--such a guy! I had
corkscrew curls, you know, and a very short frock, and very long--other
things. Oh, those frills!--And I suppose I really was the ugliest child
ever born. Old Cholderton hated me--he'd have liked to box my ears, I
know. But I think he was a little in love with Mrs Fitzhubert. Oh, I've
never asked for that 'Peerage!'"

Major Duplay had resigned himself to a patient endurance of inadequate
hints. His wits were not equal to putting together the pieces or
conducting a sort of "missing word," or missing link, exercise to a
triumphant issue. In time he would know all--supposing, that is, that
there were really anything to know. Meanwhile he was not curious about
other people's affairs; he minded his own business. Keeping young
occupied much of his time; and then there was always the question of how
it might prove possible to supplement the half-pay to which his years of
service in the Swiss Army entitled him; it was scanty, and but for his
niece's hospitality really insufficient. He thought that he was a clever
man, he had remained an honest man, and he saw no reason why Fortune
should not some day make him a comfortable man; she had never done so
yet, having sent him into the world as the fifth child of a Protestant
pastor in a French-speaking canton, and never having given him so much
as a well-to-do relative (even Madame de Kries' villa was on a modest
scale) until Mina married Adolf Zabriska and kept that gentleman's money
although she had the misfortune to lose his company. His death seemed to
Duplay at least no great calamity; that he had died childless d