nditioned,
themselves as it were accidental. With this comes a sort of innocence,
sometimes attractive, sometimes uncommonly exasperating to the normal
man.

So Lady Tristram went back to her novel, and Harry walked by the river,
moodily meditating and busily scheming. Meanwhile Mina Zabriska had
flown to the library at Merrion Lodge, and, finding books that had
belonged to a legal member of the family in days gone by, was engaged
in studying the law relating to the succession to lands and titles in
England. She did not make quick progress. Nevertheless in a day or two
she had reached a point when she was bubbling over with curiosity and
excitement; she felt that she could not go on sitting opposite Major
Duplay at meals without giving him at least a hint or two of the
wonderful state of things on which she had hit, and without asking him
to consider the facts and to have a look at the books which were so
puzzling and exercising her brain. Yet Harry Tristram, wary sentinel as
he was, did not dream of any attack or scent any danger from the needle
with two very large eyes, as he had called the lady at Merrion Lodge.

IV

SHE COULD AN' SHE WOULD

In spite of Mrs Iver's secret opinion that people with strange names
were likely to be strange themselves, and that, for all she saw,
foreigners were--not fools, as Dr Johnson's friend thought--but
generally knaves, an acquaintance was soon made between Fairholme and
Merrion Lodge. Her family was against Mrs Iver; her husband was
boundlessly hospitable, Janie was very sociable. The friendship grew and
prospered. Mr Iver began to teach the Major to play golf. Janie took
Mina Zabriska out driving in the highest dog-cart on the countryside:
they would go along the road by the river, and get out perhaps for a
wander by the Pool, or even drive higher up the valley and demand tea
from Bob Broadley at his pleasant little place--half farm, half
manor-house--at Mingham, three miles above the Pool. Matters moved so
quick that Mina understood in a week why Janie found it pleasant to have
a companion under whose aegis she could drop in at Mingham; in little
more than a fortnight she began to understand why her youthful uncle
(the Major was very young now) grunted unsympathetically when she
observed that the road to Mingham was the prettiest in the neighborhood.
The Imp was accumulating other people's secrets, and was accordingly in
a state of high satisfaction.

The situation