I gritted back a smile.  “It must have been the Engineer,” I said. 
“He’s a good deal of a prig.”

She bent over the roses.  “Oh, I wouldn’t call him just that.”

“It’s no more than I’ve heard him call himself,” I said.

“You must know him rather intimately.”

“On the contrary, I know him very slightly, though I’ve been thrown with him considerably.”

“Are you not friendly?” she asked.

“We have had differences.”

Again the roses did duty.  “I fear you are prejudiced,” she said, and I thought I caught a smothered laugh.

“Not at all,” I insisted.  “I am disposed in his favor.”

“So I should judge.”

I could not decide which way she meant it.  “Oh, he is not all bad,” I condescended.  “In many ways he is a good sort of chap.”

“Now, that’s better.” she rejoined; “to say for him what he could not, of course, say for himself.”

I forced back another laugh.  “Oh, I don’t know why he should not have said that to a friend,” said I.

“It would depend much on the friend.”

I did not know if she had given the opening, deliberately, but I took it.

“Of course, he would say that only to one he felt could understand him.”

“You are painting him rather better than you did at first,” she observed.

“I’m warming up to the subject.”

“Then suppose you tell me what he looks like.”

“That,” said I, “is to tell his greatest fault.”

“I do not understand.”

“He looks like me,” I explained.

“How horrible,” she laughed.

“He has never ceased to deplore it,” I said humbly.

“Surely, he never told you.”

“To my face, many times.”

“You had good cause for differences, then.”

“Thank you, cousin,” I said.

“And, may I ask,” she went on, “what you did to him at such times?”

I shook my head.  “It would not tell well.”

“No, possibly not; but tell me, anyway,” she said.

“Sometimes, I put him to bed—­and, sometimes, I bought him a superabundance of red liquor.”

“Don’t tell me the other times,” she interposed.

“No,” said I, “I won’t.”

She fell to plucking the roses again.

“This Captain Smith,” she said presently; “was he in Valeria six years ago?”

“That would be in 189—?” I reflected a moment.  “Yes he was here that year.”

She thought a bit.  “Was he given to reminiscing?”

“No one in America but myself knew he had been to Valeria.”

She smiled.

I saw the blunder.  “It happened he knew of my Dalberg descent,” I hastened to add.

“Has he ever mentioned an adventure in the forest near the Summer Palace?”

“I am quite sure he has not,” I said, but without looking at her.

Then I felt a touch on my arm—­and I took her gloved fingers in my own and held them.