..."

"_What_ name did he say?" Uncle Mo interrupted, with growing interest.
Dave repeated his misapprehension of it, which incorporated an idea
that similar widows would have similar surnames. If one was Marrable, it
was only natural that another should be Darrable.

Aunt M'riar, whose interest also had been some time growing, struck in
incisively. "The name was Daverill. He's mixed it up with the old lady
in the country he calls his granny." She was the more certain this was
so owing to a recent controversy with Dave about this name, ending in
his surrender of the pronunciation "Marrowbone" as untenable, but
introducing a new element of confusion owing to Marylebone Church, a
familiar landmark.

There was something in Aunt M'riar's manner that made Uncle Mo
say:--"Anything disagreed, M'riar?" Because, observe, his interest in
this mysterious man in the Park turned entirely on Mrs. Prichard's
relations with him, and he had never imputed any knowledge of him to
Aunt M'riar. Why should he? Indeed, why should we, except from the
putting of two and two together? Of which two twos, Uncle Mo might have
known either the one or the other--according to which was which--but not
both. This story has to confess occasional uncertainty about some of its
facts. There may have been more behind Uncle Mo's bit of rudeness about
Aunt M'riar's disquiet than showed on the surface. However, he never
asked any questions.

* * * * *

Those who have ever had the experience of keeping their own counsel for
a long term of years know that every year makes it harder to take others
into confidence. A concealed troth-plight, marriage, widowhood--to name
the big concealments involving no disgrace--gets less and less easy to
publish as time slips by, even as the hinges rust of doors that no man
opens. There may be nothing to blush about in that cellar, but the key
may be lost and the door-frame may have gripped the door above, or the
footstone jammed it from below, and such fungus-growth as the darkness
has bred has a claim to freedom from the light. Let it all rest--that is
its owner's word to his own soul--let it rest and be forgotten! All the
more when the cellar is full of garbage, and he knows it.

There was no garbage in Aunt M'riar's cellar that she was guilty of, but
for all that she would have jumped at any excuse to leave that door
tight shut. The difficulty was not so much in what she had to tell--for
h