'And there was a Dr. Langdale—who came from the Professor's every day, sometimes twice, to ask for you, till you were out of danger—isn't he another relation of Mrs. Farningham's?'

'Her brother.' She shivered a little as if she were cold, and Ted heaped more coal on the fire.

'Ah, now I begin to get things a little straight. I've sometimes been most awfully mixed up. "My wife's father-in-law," Farningham says, "my stepchildren," "my wife's stepfather," "my mother-in-law," "my wife's mother-in-law," "my brother-in-law," "my wife's brother-in-law," just like one of those affairs like a little telescope you turn round, and see different snaps of things spluttering at you every blessed shake. You see Mrs. Farningham's first husband's people are here from America in shoals. It's a jolly good thing there wasn't room for many of them in this pension.'

'Why—don't you like them?'

'Oh, I'd like them well enough, if there weren't so many women among them, with not a blessed turn to do but ask a fellow questions—clatter-clatter all the time, like a bell on a runaway steer. There's one of them a tall, thin woman, with eyes like knitting-pins. She's got about twenty hairs on her scalp, and twenty skewers to keep them in a tiny bob on top of her head, leaving her long, lean neck perfectly bare. I'm not what you'd call a prude, you know, but, by George, the nakedness of that neck gives me a sort of a turn! She writes for two newspapers, and she has a red morocco sort of book, with an indelible pencil, and sometimes she stops in the middle of eating her soup to put something down in this. "I dare not trust my memory, it's so treacherous," she says. "By the Lord," thinks I to myself, "I wish it were so treacherous you'd forget to ask me questions!" Yes, I sit next to her at the table-d'hôte, and there she goes at me hammer and tongs. And the less I know about the things she's interested in, the more I catch her using the indelible pencil on the sly. "Now, Mr. Ritchie, you are laughing at me, when you say you never heard of Raphael or Michael Angelo," she'll say, screwing her long neck round above my head, like a native companion in a fit. Ah, she's yards taller than I am. Wait till you see her. And there Farningham sits on the opposite side of the table, grinning at me like a negro minstrel. Let me see, she's his wife's first husband's first cousin's aunt once removed. Now what relation would you say she is to Farningham?'

'I really haven't the faintest conception,' returned Stella, with a little smile.

'No more has he. But she calls him Charles, and speaks to him solemnly about the privileged classes in England. You know he is to be Sir Charles F. when his governor dies. And then she reminds him of things that happened to his wife's first husband, as if he were the one, you know. Now, I call that deuced awkward; at any rate, it might be in many cases. I dare say it would be more damaging to the other fellow though, if Farningham had been the first husband. They say Mrs. Farningham's eldest boy by her first husband will be a millionaire when he is twenty-one; but he is a delicate little chap. Am I talking too much, Stella?'

'Oh no; it's rather amusing. I thought by something Mrs. Farningham let fall that some of her American connections were a little trying. But she did not say much; she's very loyal to them.'

'She's a regular trump. She says the right thing to everybody; and she's like you, Stella, she never gets the least ruffled—never sticks her back up, but takes everything as if it were rather fun. She had a bad illness in Dresden, but she has got over it so well—she's better than she was before. I wish you were like that. What does old Seemann mean by some mischief before the fever came on? Was it—was it that shock, Stella? You know what I mean.'

She put up her hands to her head wearily. 'I know what you mean, Ted. But there was something besides that: and the day I was taken ill it came all over again, but worse; only nothing seems very bad now. I do not think I should talk about things that used to hurt me. It cannot be helped any more; nothing can that has gone really wrong.' She gave a long, low sigh, and lay back with closed eyes.