‘Do you mean whether she has heard anything of Eric?  Oh no, Max.’

‘No, I was not meaning that,’ looking at me rather astonished.  ’Of course we know the poor boy is dead.  I was only wondering if she had had an Indian letter lately.  Well, it is none of my affair, and I cannot wait to hear more now.  Good-night, little she-bear; I am off.’  And he actually was off, in spite of my calling him quite loudly in the porch, for I wanted him to tell me what he meant.  Had Gladys any special correspondent in India?  I wondered if I might venture to question Lady Betty.

As it very often happens, she played quite innocently into my hands, for the very next day she came to tell me that she had had a letter from Gladys.

‘It was a very short one,’ she grumbled.  ’Only she had an Indian letter to answer, and that took up her time, so that was a pretty good excuse for once.’

‘Has Gladys any special friend in India?’

’Only Claude!—­I mean our cousin, Claude Hamilton.  Have you not often heard us talk of him?  How strange!  Why, he used to stay with us for months at a time, and he and Gladys were great friends:  they correspond.  He is Captain Hamilton now; his regiment was ordered to India just at the time poor dear Eric disappeared; he was awfully shocked about that, I remember.  Etta wrote and told him all about it; he was a great favourite of hers.  We none of us thought him handsome except Etta; he was a nice-looking fellow, but nothing else.’

‘And you and Gladys are fond of him?’

‘Oh yes.’  But here Lady Betty looked a little queer.

’Gladys writes to him most:  she has always been his correspondent.  Now and then I get a letter written to me.  You see, he has no one else belonging to him, now his mother is dead.  Aunt Agnes died about two years ago, and he never had brothers or sisters, so he adopted us.’

‘Uncle Max knew him, of course?’

’To be sure.  Mr. Cunliffe knew all our people.  Claude was a favourite of his, too.  I think every one liked him; he was so straightforward, and never did anything mean.  I think he will make a splendid officer; he has had fever lately, and we rather expect he is coming home on sick-leave.  Etta hopes so.’

‘Gladys has never spoken of her cousin to me.’

’That is because you two are always talking about other things,—­poor Eric, for example.  Gladys likes to talk about Claude, of course:  he is her own cousin.’  And Lady Betty’s manner was just a little defiant, as though I had accused Gladys of some indiscretion.  I heard her mutter, ‘They find plenty of fault with her about that,’ but I took no notice.  I had satisfied my curiosity, and I knew now why Max fancied an Indian letter would raise Gladys’s spirits; but all the same he might have spoken out.  Max had no business to be so mysterious with me.