to be some one great, who knows but what she may change her mind?"
"Are you something great?" asked the lady, addressing Hench quickly.
"No. I am nobody, and will remain nobody. Why should you think that I am, what you call, a mystery?"
"It is hard to say," she answered dreamily and staring hard at him. "I have seen eyes like yours somewhere. They are connected with a story--a kind of family mystery. But I can't remember to whom those eyes belonged."
"Perhaps you have met our friend here before," suggested the Nut eagerly.
"No!" said Madame positively, and Hench also shook his head. "I met him here for the first time. The person who had eyes like him I met--or I fancy I met--some twenty years ago. But it is all vague and uncertain. Yet I feel that the story I allude to is here"--she touched her forehead--"a mere word will bring it back to my memory."
"Then let us try and find the magic word," cried the irrepressible Spruce. "I am desperately curious myself to fathom a mystery which the person concerned in it does not guess."
"Meaning me," said Hench tartly. "You are talking rubbish."
"Sense, sense, common-sense. When the mystery is discovered you may be able to marry Mademoiselle Zara."
"There is no mystery about me, I tell you."
"Well, I am not so sure of that," remarked the little man, in spite of his friend's frown. "You don't know anything about your family, as you admitted to me. Yet I dare swear that those papers you are to inspect at your lawyers' in a few weeks, when you arrive at the age of twenty-five, may contain a history which will astonish you."
"Papers at your lawyers'," echoed Madame Alpenny, looking excited; "is that so?" Hench reluctantly admitted that such was the case. "But I don't suppose that anything I don't know will come to my knowledge."
"Who knows," observed the old lady thoughtfully. "Mr. Spruce is right. This hint of mystery interests me in you and makes me more ready to entertain your proposal to
Prev.
Back
Top