xclaimed, straightening her shoulders and
drawing in her chin with a mock display of bravery. "I believe it was in
an English novel that I read that any woman without a hump can get any
man she sets out for. It is a matter of determination and concentration
and a wise choice of vulnerable objects."

"Marta, Marta!" gasped Mrs. Galland. In her tone was a volume of
lamentation.

"Now that I'm twenty-seven mother is ready to take any risk on my
behalf, if it is masculine. By the time I'm thirty she will be ready to
give me to a peddler with a harelip!" she said mischievously.

"A peddler with a harelip! Marta, will you never be serious?"

"Some day, mother," Marta went on, "when we find the right man, you hold
him while I propose, and together we'll surely--"

Mrs. Galland could not resist laughing, which was one way to stop
further absurdities--absurdities concealing a nervous strain they
happened to be this time--while Colonel Lanstron was a little flushed
and ill at ease. She had a truly silvery laugh--the kind no longer in
fashion among the gentry since golden laughs came in,--that went well
with the dimples dipping into her pink cheeks.

Contrary to custom, she did not excuse herself immediately after
luncheon for her afternoon nap, but kept battling with her nods until
nature was victorious and the fell fast asleep. Marta, grown restless
with impatience, suggested to Lanstron that they stroll in the garden,
and they took the path past the house toward the castle tower, stopping
in an arbor with high hedges on either side around a statue of Mercury.

"Now!" exclaimed Marta narrowly. "It was you, Lanny, who recommended
Feller to us as a gardener, competent though deaf!" With literal brevity
she told how she had proved him to be a man of most sensitive hearing.
"I didn't let him know that he was discovered. I felt too much pity for
him to do that. You brought him here--you, Lanny, you are the one to
explain."

"True, he is not deaf!" Lanstron replied.

"You knew he was not deaf, while we wrote our messages to him and I have
been learning the deaf-and-dumb alphabet! It was pretty fun, wasn't it?"

"Not fun--no, Marta!" he parried.

"He is a spy?" she asked.

"Yes, a spy. You can put things in a bright light, Marta!" He found
words coming with difficulty in face of the pain and disillusion of her
set look.

"Using some broken man as a pawn; setting him as a spy in the garden
where you have been the welcome