"That's a good thing; he was in no condition to preach."
"He will come back sometime for a visit," Justin went on. "Through me he sends kind messages to all his friends. He hopes to see them at some future time."
As he spoke, he raised his voice in order to include Chelda in his remark, but she went on serenely with her work and made no response.
"So he is not coming back," mumbled Miss Gastonguay, "not coming back," and leaving Justin she began an aimless ramble about the room. The restlessness of premature old age was upon her, and Chelda waited patiently for her to make a certain discovery.
In the meantime, Justin Mercer must not sit there staring so persistently at the little manly figure, and rising she presented to him in a natural and easy manner the evening papers from Bangor that Prosperity had just brought in.
Justin, glad to be relieved from the necessity of talking to her, buried his face in the freshly folded sheets, just as Miss Gastonguay stopped in the place where Chelda wished her to stop, and ejaculated, "What's this? Who has rammed this volume behind my Rouen bracket? It is almost impossible to get it out. Was this your doing, Chelda?"
Chelda lifted her long black eyelashes. "Yes, aunt, I wanted to get the stupid thing out of the way. I thought it was a story when I bought it, but it is only some accounts of criminal life."
Justin's paper rustled slightly in his hand. Chelda heard it, but did not look at him, neither did she look at her aunt, whose sudden subsidence and sudden click of her eyeglasses against the buttons of her house coat told that she was sitting down to examine the volume.
For some time there was silence. Miss Gastonguay was uttering words below her breath. "Criminals have usually chestnut brown eyes,—no, not all criminals, only thieves, and murderers. How interesting. What is this? 'Career of the most celebrated criminal of modern times, the inventor of the modern kit of marvellously small and fine burglars' tools that can be carried in a hand-bag, the versatile Henry Jones alias Thomas Martin alias James Smith and half a dozen other aliases, but known to his confederates as Gentleman George. A perfect gentleman.' Gentleman, indeed," she repeated, and without the quiver of a muscle, the flutter of an eyelid, she ran over the account of a life that she knew was in reality the life led by her long lost brother.
"Very clever," she ejaculated when she had finished, then raising her head she saw that her niece and Justin were both gazing at her.