edly.

"Oh, it's the System for the Regeneration of the Arctic Regions--the
Greenland affair of my friend de Mersch. Churchill is going to make a
grand coup with that--to keep himself from slipping down hill, and, of
course, it would add immensely to your national prestige. And he only
half sees what de Mersch is or _isn't_."

"This is all Greek to me," I muttered rebelliously.

"Oh, I know, I know," she said. "But one has to do these things, and I
want you to understand. So Churchill doesn't like the whole business.
But he's under the shadow. He's been thinking a good deal lately that
his day is over--I'll prove it to you in a minute--and so--oh, he's
going to make a desperate effort to get in touch with the spirit of the
times that he doesn't like and doesn't understand. So he lets you get
his atmosphere. That's all."

"Oh, that's _all_," I said, ironically.

"Of course he'd have liked to go on playing the stand-off to chaps like
you and me," she mimicked the tone and words of Fox himself.

"This is witchcraft," I said. "How in the world do you know what Fox
said to me?"

"Oh, I know," she said. It seemed to me that she was playing me with all
this nonsense--as if she must have known that I had a tenderness for her
and were fooling me to the top of her bent. I tried to get my hook in.

"Now look here," I said, "we must get things settled. You ..."

She carried the speech off from under my nose.

"Oh, you won't denounce me," she said, "not any more than you did
before; there are so many reasons. There would be a scene, and you're
afraid of scenes--and our aunt would back _me_ up. She'd have to. My
money has been reviving the glories of the Grangers. You can see,
they've been regilding the gate."

I looked almost involuntarily at the tall iron gates through which she
had passed into my view. It was true enough--some of the scroll work was
radiant with new gold.

"Well," I said, "I will give you credit for not wishing to--to prey upon
my aunt. But still ..." I was trying to make the thing out. It struck
me that she was an American of the kind that subsidizes households like
that of Etchingham Manor. Perhaps my aunt had even forced her to take
the family name, to save appearances. The old woman was capable of
anything, even of providing an obscure nephew with a brilliant sister.
And I should not be thanked if I interfered. This skeleton of swift
reasoning passed between word and word ... "You are no sister o