"Well, isn't she very nice, Alice?" said Evelyn, raising herself on the sofa. "Didn't I give you a good description of her?"
"I expect Miss Fitzgerald is not so hasty in forming her opinion as you are, Evelyn," I said.
"By the by, Alice," Evelyn went on, "May thinks she knows a friend of yours; at least, if you are the same Alice Fitzgerald. What is her name, May?"
"It is a gentleman," I said, turning very red, in spite of all my efforts to the contrary—"Mr. Claude Ellis."
"Claude!" repeated Miss Fitzgerald, in astonishment. "Do you know Claude? I never heard him speak of you."
"No, perhaps not," I said; "but I do know him very well indeed; we were playfellows when we were children, and have lived next door to each other all our lives."
"How very strange that I never heard your name!" said Miss Fitzgerald. "And I was staying at the Parsonage last spring; would you be at Acton then?"
"No," I said, "we had left a little time before you went there. Do you remember noticing a house, standing in a large garden, close to the Parsonage?"
"Oh yes," said Miss Fitzgerald; "it was shut up when I was there, and Claude said the doctor used to live there."
"Yes, the doctor was my father," I said, checking the tears, which would come in spite of myself, and which nearly choked me.