As Mrs. Welby was between Anita and the door, the girl was forced to pause. She looked the older woman over, with an appraising glance that was not rude, but merely disinterested.

“No?” she said, with a curious rising inflection, that somehow seemed meant to close the incident.

But Mrs. Welby was not so easily baffled.

“No,” she repeated, smilingly. “And we want to know you better. You’re too young and too pretty not to be a general favorite amongst us. How old are you, my dear child?”

“Just a hundred,” and Miss Austin’s dark eyes were so grave, and seemed to hold such a world of wisdom and experience that Mrs. Welby almost jumped.

Too amazed to reply, she even let the girl get past her, and out of the street door, before she recovered her poise.

“She’s uncanny,” Mrs. Welby declared, when telling Miss Bascom of the interview. “I give you my word, when she said that, she looked a hundred!”

“Looked a hundred! What do you mean?”

“Just that. Her eyes seemed to hold all there is of knowledge, yes—and of evil—”

“Evil! My goodness!” Miss Bascom rolled this suggestion like a sweet morsel under her tongue.

“Oh—I don’t say there’s anything wrong about the girl—”

“Well! If her eyes showed depths of evil, I should say there was something wrong!”

The episode was repeated from one to another of the exclusive clientele of the Adams house, until, by exaggeration and imagination it grew into quite a respectable arraignment of Miss Mystery, and branded her as a doubtful character if not a dangerous one.

Before Miss Austin had been in the house a week, she had definitely settled her status from her own point of view.

Uniformly correct and courteous of manner, she rarely spoke, save when necessary. It was as if she had declared, “I will not talk. If this be mystery, make the most of it.”

Old Salt, apparently, backed her up in this determination, and allowed her to sit next him at table, without addressing her at all.

More, he often took it upon himself to answer a remark or question meant for her and for this he sometimes received a fleeting glance, 

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