Clara Brooke shook her head; she was in nowise convinced.
"Gracious goodness! whatever can that be?" ejaculated Miss Primby with a start.
"Only Gerald and the Baron Von Rosenberg practising at the pistol-range. It is an amusement both of them are fond of."
"An amusement do you call it! I wish they would practise their amusements farther from the house, then.--Heaven preserve us! there they go again. No wonder I have broken my needle."
"It's nothing, Aunt Jane, when you are used to it," responded her niece with a smile.
"Used to it, indeed! I should never get used to it as long as I lived. I have no doubt this is another of the objectionable practices your husband picked up while he was living in foreign parts."
"Seeing that Gerald was brought up in Poland, and that he lived in that country and in Russia from the time he was five years old till he was close on twenty (I think I have told you before that his grandmother was a Polish lady of rank), I have no doubt it was while he was living in those foreign parts, as you call them, that he learnt to be so fond of pistol-practice."
At this moment there came the sound of two pistol-shots in quick succession. Miss Primby started to her feet. "My dear Clara," she exclaimed, "if you don't want my poor nerves to be shattered for life, you won't object to my going to my own room. With plenty of cotton wool in my ears, and my Indian shawl wrapped round my head, I may perhaps---- Dear, dear! now my thimble's gone."
"Why, there's your thimble, aunt, on your finger."
"So it is--so it is, dear. That shows the state of my poor nerves."