'd never met
Irene?"

"I never had that pleasure."

"She was married over in Italy. The Queen of Italy asked for it to be
that way, and with mother gone, I didn't see it mattered much, though
Minnie didn't like it. But the Queen was Hannibal's godmother. She
was at the wedding. We didn't think, when Irene used to lie in her
little crib in the front bedroom in Kansas City, sucking on that rubber
doll, that a queen would be at her wedding, did we?"

I looked out of the window for a minute, frowning a little in the
effort to adjust my ideas to the surprise of the Vails' having had a
housekeeper in those early days. When I turned my face to the room
again, Mrs. Leeth was gone.

"Minnie got me to give up the business, and after a while I did. So
long as I was working for mother and the girls, I'd never have stopped,
but with them gone, and the rest I had to take, after the pneumonia, I
sort of let things slide. What's the use? There's Vint, now--he kept
at it till he died. No one to do for, really--his girl had all her
mother's money, too, and she gives it all to foreign missions, anyhow.

"She's here, you know. Thinks she's--well, I guess I couldn't tell a
lady just what she thinks she is, poor thing!"

"I see why she's here, Mr. Vail; but tell me, why do you stay here?" I
cried suddenly; the quiet, sensible little man forced it out of me,
fairly.

He looked whimsically up at me--I sat higher in my chair than he.

"Didn't the doctor tell you?" he asked quietly.

"No, he said you would, perhaps."

"Well, I don't mind. It happened when she died."

"Mrs. Vail?"

"No, Mrs. Leeth."

I jumped--I couldn't help it.

"Wh--what?" I gasped. What a horrible thing--like a bomb thrown into
the quiet room!

"Yes," he said placidly, "sounds queer to you, doesn't it? Well, it is
queer, I guess."

It was with the greatest difficulty that I held myself to my chair. My
throat went perfectly dry, suddenly, and if I did not scream, it was
merely because I have a fairly strong will and a horror of making a
scene. The little room had turned dreadful to me, all at
once--dreadful and unnatural; Absolom Vail, in his pepper-and-salt, a
nightmare.

He seemed to read my thoughts and put his hand out reassuringly.

"Oh, I don't think she's dead, _now_!" he explained, "I'm not so crazy
as all that comes to! Goodness, no!"

"Oh...," I faltered, soothed in spite of myself by his kindly smile.

"No, no. It was thi