"Well, have you seen this Fanny Radowski?" said Lord Silverdale, when he returned the manuscript to the President of the Old Maids' Club.
"Of course. Didn't I tell you I had the story from her own mouth, though I have put it into Mendoza's?"
"Ah, yes, I remember now. It certainly is funny, her refusing a good Catholic on the ground that he was a bad Jew. But then according to the story she doesn't know he's a Catholic?"
"No, it was I who divined the joke of the situation. Lookers-on always see more of the game. I saw at once that if Mendoza were really a Jew, he would never have been such an ass as to make the slip he did; and so from this and several other things she told me about her lover, I constructed deductively the history you have read. She says she first met him at a mourning service in memory of her father, and that it is a custom among her people when they have not enough men to form a religious quorum (the number is the mystical ten) to invite any brother Jew who may be passing to step in, whether he is an acquaintance or not."
"I gathered that from the narrative," said Lord Silverdale. "And so she wishes to be an object lesson in female celibacy, does she?"
"She is most anxious to enlist in the Cause."
"Is she really beautiful, et cetera?"
"She is magnificent."
"Then I should say the very member we are looking for. A Jewess will be an extremely valuable element of the Club, for her race exalts marriage even above happiness, and an old maid is even more despised than among us. The lovely Miss Radowski will be an eloquent protest against the prejudices of her people."
Lillie Dulcimer shook her head quietly. "The racial accident which makes her seem a desirable member to you, makes me regard her as impossible."