"Thanks, child. Perhaps it's my second childhood. I don't want to be cynical—but I must. One reason I came to you is because I want you to refresh my point of view. I wonder what air and sunshine and bed at ten o'clock would do for me. Would you like to prescribe it for me? I wonder if you wouldn't take me West with you."
Camilla laughed again.
"Are you really in earnest? Of course I'd be delighted—but I'm afraid you wouldn't be. The accommodations are abominable except, of course, in Denver, and you wouldn't want to stay there. You know our—our house isn't finished yet. It would be fine if we could camp—but that isn't very comfortable. I love it. But you know there are no porcelain tubs——"
"Oh, I know. I've camped in the West, dear, a good many years ago—before you were born. I wonder how I should like it now——"
She paused, her wandering gaze resting on the desk, which Camilla had left in disorder, the letters scattered, the photographs at which she had been looking propped upright against the tin document-box. It was on the photographs that Mrs. Rumsen's gaze had stopped. Slowly she rose from her chair, with an air of arrested attention, adjusted her lorgnon, and examined it at close range.
"I thought I might have been mistaken at first," she said quickly. "I see I'm not. Camilla, dear, where on earth did you get that photograph of the General?"
Camilla had risen. "The General?" she faltered. "I don't understand."
"Of my brother—Cornelius Bent—that is his photograph. I have one like it in the family album at home."
"That can't be."
"I was looking over them only the other day—why do you look so strangely?"