the bequest--not an unwelcome one. She was
to take her stepfather's name, Nightingale. She was really very glad
to do this. There was a _faux air_ of a real married name about Mrs.
Nightingale that was lacking in Mrs. Graythorpe. Besides, all
troublesome questions about who Sally's father was would get lost
sight of in the fact that her mother had changed her name in connexion
with that sacred and glorious thing, an inheritance. A trust-fund
would always be a splendid red-herring to draw across the path of Mrs.
Grundy's sleuth-hounds--a quarry more savoury to their nostrils even
than a reputation. And nothing soothes the sceptical more than being
asked now and again to witness a transfer of stock, especially if it
is money held in trust. It has all the force of a pleasant alterative
pill on the circulation of Respectability--removes obstructions
and promotes appetite--is a certain remedy for sleeplessness, and
so forth. So though there wasn't a particle of reason why Mrs.
Nightingale's money should be held by any one but herself, as she had
no intention whatever of marrying, Colonel Lund consented to become
her trustee; and both felt that something truly respectable had been
done--something that if it didn't establish a birthright and a correct
extraction for Miss Sally, at any rate went a long way towards it.

By the time Mrs. Nightingale had got settled in the little house at
Shepherd's Bush, that she took on a twenty-one years' lease five or
six years after her return to England, and had christened it
Saratoga, after her early recollection of the place where she first
saw her stepfather, whose name she took when she came into the money
he left her--by this time she, with the assistance of Colonel Lund,
had quite assumed the appearance of a rather comfortably off young
widow-lady, who did not make a great parade of her widowhood, but
whose circumstances seemed reasonable enough, and challenged no
inquiry. Inquisitiveness would have seemed needless impertinence--just
as much so as yours would have been in the case of the hypothetical
So-and-sos at the beginning of our last chapter. A vague impression
got in the air that Sally's father had not been altogether
satisfactory--well, wasn't it true? It may have leaked out from
something in "the Major's" manner. But it never produced any effect
on friends, except that they saw in it a reason why Mrs. Nightingale
never mentioned her husband. He had been a black sheep. Silence