Her look was mischievous.  “But, unless I mistake, I think she came from Hendre Coed, near Bangor.”

“Wales is a village!” I exclaimed, catching my breath.  “Every Welsh person seems to know all about every other.”

My new acquaintance smiled again.  When she smiled she was irresistible:  a laughing face protruding from a cloud of diaphanous drapery.  “Now, shall I tell you how I came to know that?” she asked, poising a glace cherry on her dessert fork in front of her.  “Shall I explain my trick, like the conjurers?”

“Conjurers never explain anything,” I answered.  “They say:  ’So, you see, that’s how it’s done!’—­with a swift whisk of the hand—­ and leave you as much in the dark as ever.  Don’t explain like the conjurers, but tell me how you guessed it.”

She shut her eyes and seemed to turn her glance inward.

“About three years ago,” she began slowly, like one who reconstructs with an effort a half-forgotten scene, “I saw a notice in the Times—­Births, Deaths, and Marriages—­’On the 27th of October’—­was it the 27th?” The keen brown eyes opened again for a second and flashed inquiry into mine.

“Quite right,” I answered, nodding.

“I thought so.  ’On the 27th of October, at Brynmor, Bournemouth, Emily Olwen Josephine, widow of the late Thomas Cumberledge, sometime colonel of the 7th Bengal Regiment of Foot, and daughter of Iolo Gwyn Ford, Esq., J.P., of Hendre Coed, near Bangor.  Am I correct?” She lifted her dark eyelashes once more and flooded me.

“You are quite correct,” I answered, surprised.  “And that is really all that you knew of my mother?”

“Absolutely all.  The moment I saw your card, I thought to myself, in a breath:  ’Ford, Cumberledge; what do I know of those two names?  I have some link between them.  Ah, yes; found Mrs. Cumberledge, wife of Colonel Thomas Cumberledge, of the 7th Bengals, was a Miss Ford, daughter of a Mr. Ford, of Bangor.’  That came to me like a lightning-gleam.  Then I said to myself again, ‘Dr. Hubert Ford Cumberledge must be their son.’  So there you have ‘the train of reasoning.’  Women can reason—­sometimes.  I had to think twice, though, before I could recall the exact words of the Times notice.”

“And can you do the same with everyone?”

“Everyone!  Oh, come, now:  that is expecting too much!  I have not read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested everyone’s family announcements.  I don’t pretend to be the Peerage, the Clergy List, and the London Directory rolled into one.  I remembered your family all the more vividly, no doubt, because of the pretty and unusual old Welsh names, ‘Olwen’ and ‘Iolo Gwyn Ford,’ which fixed themselves on my memory by their mere beauty.  Everything about Wales always attracts me; my Welsh side is uppermost.  But I have hundreds—­oh, thousands—­of such facts stored and pigeon-holed in my memory.  If anybody else cares to try me,” she glanced round the table, “perhaps we may be able to test my power that way.”