“Hello, dears!” the old man interrupted suddenly, as, leaning heavily on the baluster, he descended the stairs.  “I’ve got good news for you.”

“Good news, Uncle James?” Miss Lucilla said, reproachfully.  With her long, grave face, and in her heavy crape, she looked as though she found good news decidedly out of place.

“The very best,” the banker declared, reaching the hall and taking his nephew and niece each by an arm.  “Come into the library and I’ll tell you.  There!” he went on, pushing Miss Lucilla into an arm-chair.  “Sit down, Derek, and make yourself comfortable.  Now, listen, both of you.  Perhaps you’re going to have a new aunt.”

“Oh, Uncle James!” Miss Lucilla cried, in the voice of a person about to faint.

“You’re going to be married!” Derek roared, with the fury of a father addressing a wayward son.

“The young woman,” the banker went on to explain, “is of French extraction, but Irish on the mother’s side.”

Derek grasped the arms of his chair and half rose, making an inarticulate sound.

“’Sh!  ’Sh!” the old man went on, lifting a warning hand.  “She’d had reverses of fortune; but that wasn’t the reason why she came to me.  Though her husband had just died, leaving nothing, she had her own dot, on the income of which she could have lived.  But that didn’t suit her.  Her husband had left a mother, who had neither dot nor anything else in the world.  At the age of sixty the old woman was a pauper.  My little lady came to see me in order to transfer all her own money secretly to her mother-in-law, and face the world herself with empty hands.”

“My God!” Derek breathed, just audibly.  Miss Lucilla sat upright and tense, hot tears starting to her eyes.

“Plucky, wasn’t it?” the uncle went on, complacently.  “I didn’t approve of it at first, but I let her do it in the end, knowing that some good fellow would make it up to her.”

“Don’t joke, uncle,” Derek cried, nervously.  “It’s too serious for that.”

“I’m not joking.  It’s what I did think.  And if the world wasn’t full of idiots who couldn’t tell diamonds from glass, a little woman like that would have been snapped up long ago.”

Derek sprang up and strode across the room.

“Do you mean to tell me,” he demanded, turning abruptly, “that she made over all her money to Mrs. Eveleth—­a woman who has deserted her, like the rest of us?”

“That’s what she did; but there’s this to be said for the old lady, that she doesn’t know it.  She thinks it’s the wreck of her own fortune, and Diane wouldn’t let me tell her the truth.  Since you seem to be interested in the little story,” he added, with sarcasm, “you may hear all about it.”

With tolerable accuracy he gave the details of his first interview with Diane, three years previous.  Long before he finished, Lucilla was weeping silently, while Derek stood like a man turned to stone.  Even the banker’s own face took on an expression of whimsical gravity as he said in conclusion: