“Why, what should I know of him?” says she, and then, turning to stare after him, she cried, “There he is, talking to my father. I’m sure he knows we’re picking him to pieces.”

“Pearls every one,” says I.

“Oh, dad is calling me,” she exclaimed, breaking away upon the words and showing me as pretty an ankle, when she turned, as I am likely to behold out of Dublin. A minute afterwards, what should I see but the General and her walking off with my friend Fabos just as if they had known him all their lives.

“And may the great god Bacchus, to say nothing of the little divinities who preside over the baked meats, may they forgive him!” I cried to Barry Henshaw and the rest of the seven. “He has gone without leaving us the money for our supper, and ’tis two and tenpence halfpenny that stands for all the capital I have in this mortal world.”

We shook our heads in true sorrow, and buttoned our coats about us. In thirst we came, in thirst must we return.

“And for a bit of a colleen that I could put in my pocket,” says I, as we tramped from the hall.

But what the others said I will make no mention of, being a respecter of persons and of the King’s English—God bless him!

CHAPTER II.

IN WHICH HARRIET FABOS TELLS OF HER BROTHER’S RETURN TO DEEPDENE HALL IN SUFFOLK.

I have been asked to write very shortly what I know of General Fordibras and of my brother’s mysterious departures from England in the summer of the year 1904. God grant that all is well with him, and that these lines will be read by no others than the good friends who have not forgotten me in my affliction!

It was, I think, in the December of the previous year that he first met the General in London, as I understood from him, at a fashionable bazaar at Kensington. This circumstance he related to me upon his return; and a sister’s interest in Joan Fordibras could not be but a growing one. I recollect that the General drove over one day in the spring from Newmarket and took luncheon with us. He is a fine, stately man, with a marked American accent, and a manner which clearly indicates his French birth. The daughter I thought a pretty winsome child; very full of quaint sayings and ideas, and so unlike our English girls. Ean had spoken of her so often that I was not prepared for the somewhat distant manner in which he treated her. 

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