ere, you see, and under the circumstances----"

"Left her here!" cried my wife. "I've been sitting with her the whole
afternoon, sewing, and she told me that he left her at Geneva, and
came back and took her to Basle, and the baby was born there--now I'm
sure, dear, because I asked her."

"Perhaps I was mistaken when I thought he said she was on this side of
the water," I suggested, with bitter, biting irony.

"You poor dear, did I abuse you?" said my wife. "But, do you know,
Mrs. Tabb said that _she_ didn't know how many lumps of sugar he took
in his coffee. Now that seems queer, doesn't it?"

It did. It was a small thing. But it looked queer, Very queer.

* * * * *

The next morning, it was clear that war was declared against the
Bredes. They came down to breakfast somewhat late, and, as soon as
they arrived, the Biggleses swooped up the last fragments that
remained on their plates, and made a stately march out of the
dining-room, Then Miss Hoogencamp arose and departed, leaving a whole
fish-ball on her plate. Even as Atalanta might have dropped an apple
behind her to tempt her pursuer to check his speed, so Miss Hoogencamp
left that fish-ball behind her, and between her maiden self and
contamination.

We had finished our breakfast, my wife and I, before the Bredes
appeared. We talked it over, and agreed that we were glad that we had
not been obliged to take sides upon such insufficient testimony.

After breakfast, it was the custom of the male half of the Jacobus
household to go around the corner of the building and smoke their
pipes and cigars where they would not annoy the ladies. We sat under a
trellis covered with a grapevine that had borne no grapes in the
memory of man. This vine, however, bore leaves, and these, on that
pleasant summer morning, shielded from us two persons who were in
earnest conversation in the straggling, half-dead flower-garden at the
side of the house.

"I don't want," we heard Mr. Jacobus say, "to enter in no man's
_pry_-vacy; but I do want to know who it may be, like, that I hev in
my house. Now what I ask of _you_, and I don't want you to take it as
in no ways _personal_, is--hev you your merridge-license with you?"

"No," we heard the voice of Mr. Brede reply. "Have you yours?"

I think it was a chance shot; but it told all the same. The Major (he
was a widower) and Mr. Biggle and I looked at each other; and Mr.
Jacobus, on the other side of