said impatiently.

He looked at her with curious intentness. "It is about an aunt of
yours--Mrs. Green. I met her when I was in California."

Her surprise was so complete that he must have been gratified.

"An aunt of mine? I haven't any aunt."

For a minute he hesitated. Now that he had come to practical matters his
careless jocularity had given place to a manner of serious deliberation.
"Then your father hasn't told you?" he asked.

"Is she his sister?" Her distrust of Gershom was so strong that she
could not bring herself to a direct reply.

"So he hasn't?" After all she might as well have answered his question.
"No, she isn't his sister." His smile was full of meaning.

"Then she must be"--there was a change in her voice which he was quick
to detect--"she must be the sister of my mother."

"Didn't you know that she had one?" he enquired. "Don't you remember
seeing her when you were a child?"

She shook her head. "No, I don't remember her, and Father has never
spoken of her."

At this he glanced at her sharply, and then looked away over the tops of
the trees to the political mausoleum of the City Hall. "We take that as
a sort of joke now," he remarked irrelevantly, "but the time was--and
not so long ago either--when we boasted of it more than of the Lee
monument. Cost a lot too, they say! Queer, ain't it, the way we spend a
million dollars or more on a thing one year, and the next want to kick
it out on the junk heap? I reckon it's the same way about behaviour too.
It ain't so much what you do as the time you do it in that seems to make
the difference." As she showed no inclination to follow this train of
moralizing, he asked suddenly, "Do you remember your mother?"

"Only once. I remember seeing her once." He had not imagined that her
voice could become so gentle.

"Did they ever tell you what became of her?"

"Yes, I know that. She lost her mind. They told me that she died in the
asylum."

He was still watching her closely, as if he were observing the effect on
her nerves of each word he uttered. "Did they tell you the cause of it?"

She shook her head. "That was all they ever told me."

"You mean your father never mentioned it to you? Are you sure he never
spoke of Mrs. Green?"

"I shouldn't have forgotten. But, if she is my mother's sister, why has
she never written to me?"

"Ah, that's just it! She was afraid your father wouldn't like it. There
was a difference of some kind. I don't know w