'll promise not to say anything to her
_because_ of what you've said to me. But if I suspect it myself on my
account later on, of course I shall."

"What shall you say to her?"

"Ask her if it's true! Why not? But what was it made _you_ think so?"
Whereon the Major gave in detail his impressions of the little
incidents recorded above, which Sally had seen nothing in. He laid
a good deal of stress on the fact that her mother had suppressed the
Christmas present until after Dr. Vereker and his mother had departed.
She wouldn't have minded the doctor, he said, but she would naturally
want to keep the old bird out of the swim. Besides, there was Fenwick
himself--one could see what _he_ thought of it! She could perfectly
well stop him if she chose, and she didn't choose.

"Stop his whatting?" asked Sally perplexingly. But she admitted the
possibility of an answer by not pressing the question home. Then she
went on to say that all these things had happened exactly under her
nose, and she had never seen anything in them. The only concession she
was inclined to make was in respect of the impression her mother
evidently made on Mr. Fenwick. But that was nothing wonderful.
Anything else would have been very surprising. Only it didn't follow
from that that mother wanted to marry Mr. Fenwick, or Mr. Anybody. As
far as he himself went, she liked him awfully--but then he couldn't
recollect who he was, poor fellow! It was most pathetic sometimes to
see him trying. If only he could have remembered that he hadn't been
a pirate, or a forger, or a wicked Marquis! But to know absolutely
nothing at all about himself! Why, the only thing that was known now
about his past life was that he once knew a Rosalind Nightingale--what
he said to her in the railway-carriage. And now he had forgotten that,
too, like everything else.

"I say, Major dear"--Sally has an influx of a new idea--"it ought to
be possible to find out something about that Rosalind Nightingale he
knew. Mamma says it's nonsense her being any relation, because she'd
know."

"And suppose we did find out who she was?"

"Well, then, if we could get at her, we might get her to tell us who
he was. And then we could tell him."

Perhaps it is only his fossil-like way of treating the subject, but
certainly the Major shows a very slack interest, Sally thinks, in the
identity of this namesake of hers. He does, however, ask absently,
what sort of way did he speak of her in the train?