“My Uncle Max’s name is Arndt,” she said, very decidedly. “He is my mother’s brother, and my mother’s name was Arndt before she married.”
Hope leaned back in the hot, stuffy cushions of the railway carriage, nonplussed. This was altogether beyond her understanding. And the Fräulein, a little nettled, but triumphant, sat looking at her with something of pity in her great long-lashed blue eyes, while O’Hara on the seat opposite was bent double in a convulsion of merriment.
“I don’t really see, Mr. O’Hara,” Minna observed, rebukingly, a moment later, “what there is to laugh over. Would you mind telling me?”
The Irishman, who had more than a passing fondness for the girl, pulled a straight face on the instant.
“I’m sorry, Miss von Altdorf,” he apologised. “It’s too bad of me, isn’t it? And I beg Miss Van Tuyl’s pardon, too. I’d like to explain the whole blessed thing to you both, but to tell the truth, I fancy the gentleman of the mixed nomenclature had better be after doing it himself.”
But when Grey arrived and the situation was laid before him, the explanation was not at the moment forthcoming. He evaded it as deftly as he knew how, which, if the truth be told, was not by any means to the taste of either of the ladies. It would have been an easy matter to clear the mystery for Hope, but he hesitated to confess to Minna, in the presence of the others, that he had been sailing under false colours. She was a sensitive child, and serious, and he had no relish for inflicting the pain that his unmasking would, he knew, entail. So he simply said:
“Ah, that’s a long story and we’ll have it at another time. Just now I want to know what Miss Van Tuyl is going to wire to her doting father.”
O’Hara excused himself and went out, and Miss von Altdorf extracted a novel from her satchel and buried herself in its pages.
“Wire him,” Hope directed, “that I’ve gone on with you unexpectedly to Kürschdorf to secure rooms for the royal obsequies, and that he is to follow tomorrow night with the luggage.”
“But he won’t get it until late tonight, you know; possibly not until tomorrow morning,” Grey told her.