forth a note-book of Russia
leather, and began to write with a stylographic pen, which had dangled
in a gold case on a richly furnished chatelaine. This little lady had
"done" herself well since yesterday.

"I shall take notes of everything," she announced. "That bit about
Napoleon goes down first."

"Surely you knew, Aunt Fay," said the Mariner, with a warning in his
lifted eyebrows.

"I don't know anything about Holland, except that it's flat and wet,"
she replied, defying him, as she can afford to do, now that, once an
aunt, she must be always an aunt, as far as this tour is concerned.
"It's not the fashion in _my_ part of Scotland for ladies of position to
know things about foreign countries they've not visited. It's considered
frumpish, and though I may not be as young as I once was, I am _not_
frumpish."

She certainly is not. The real Lady MacNairne does not dress as smartly,
or have such an air of Parisian elegance as this mysterious little
upstart has put on since assuming her part. Save for the gray hair and
the hideous glasses, there could scarcely be a daintier figure than that
of the Mariner's false Aunt Fay.

"However," she went on, "my doctor has recommended a tonic, and I
shouldn't wonder if a spice of information might be a mental stimulant.
Anyhow, I intend to try it, and ask questions of everybody about
everything."

All this she said with a quaint, bird-like air, and I began to be
impressed with the curious fascination which emanates from this strange,
small person. I am in her secret. I know she is a fraud, though of all
else concerning her I am in ignorance--perhaps blissful ignorance. I
have none too much respect for the little wretch, despite her gray
hairs; yet, somehow, I felt at this moment that I was _on her side_. I
was afraid that, if she asked any favor of me, I should run to do it;
and I could imagine myself being ass enough to quail before the mite's
Liliputian displeasure. As for Starr, I could see that he dared not say
his soul was his own, if she laid claim to it. He might raise his
eyebrows, or telegraph with his eyelids, but a certain note in that
crisp, youthful-sounding voice, would reduce him to complete subjection,
in what our German cousins call an _augenblick_. No wonder that
Tiberius--who looks as if he could play lion to her martyr without a
single rehearsal--fawns, crawls, and wriggles like the merest puppy at
the lifting of her tiny finger, when she wills--as is s