Nor was there the least revelation in the calm, half-bored, yet good-humored presence of the wicked uncle at dinner. So indifferent did he seem, not only to his own villainy but even to the loss it had entailed, that she had a wild impulse to take the ring from her pocket and display it on her own finger before him then and there. But the conviction that he would in some way be equal to the occasion prevented her. The dinner passed off with some constraint, no doubt emanating from the conscious Kitty and Gunn. Nevertheless, when they had returned to the drawing-room, Gabriel rubbed his hands expectantly.
“I prevailed on Sylvester this morning to promise to tell us some of his experiences—something COMPLETE and satisfactory this time. Eh?”
Uncle Sylvester, warming his cold blood before the fire, looked momentarily forgetful and—disappointing. Cousins Jane and Emma shrugged their shoulders.
“Eh,” said Uncle Sylvester absently, “er—er—oh yes! Well” (more cheerfully), “about what, eh?”
“Let it be,” said Marie pointedly, fixing her black magnetic eyes on the wicked stranger, “let it be something about the DISCOVERY of gold, or a buried TREASURE HOARD, or a robbery.”
To her intense disgust Uncle Sylvester, far from being discomfited or confused, actually looked pleased, and his gray eyes thawed slightly.
“Certainly,” he said. “Well, then! Down on the San Joaquin River there was an old chap—one of the earliest settlers—in fact, he'd come on from Oregon before the gold discovery. His name, dear me!”—continued Uncle Sylvester, with an effort of memory and apparently beginning already to lose his interest in the story—“was—er—Flint.”
As Uncle Sylvester paused here, Cousin Jane broke in impatiently. “Well, that's not an uncommon name. There was an old carpenter here in your father's time who was called Flint.”
“Yes,” said Uncle Sylvester languidly. “But there is, or was, something uncommon about it—and that's the point of the story, for in the old time Flint and Gunn were of the same stock.”
“Is this a Californian joke?” said Gunn, with a forced smile on his flushed face. “If so, spare me, for it's an old one.”