im to question
her. Their status in Rouen was established, and if not distinguished it
was indubitably respectable and not remotely suggestive of mystery.

Price, convinced that Helene's father must have been a gentleman,
recalled that he had asked her one day to tell him something of the
Delanos, but his wife had replied vaguely that she believed her
mother had been too sad to talk about him for a long while, and then
probably had got out of the habit. She knew nothing more than she
already had told him.

It came back to him, however, that several times his wife's casual
references to the past, and particularly regarding her parents, had not
dove-tailed, but that he had dismissed the impression; attributing it to
some lapse in his own attention. He had a bad habit of listening and
thinking out a knotty business problem at the same time. And there is a
curious inhibition in loyal minds which forbids them to put two and two
together until suspicion is inescapably aroused.

He had a very well ordered mind, furnished with innumerable little pigeon
holes, which flew open at the proper vibration from his admirable memory.
He concentrated this memory upon a little bureau of purely personal
receptacles and before long certain careless phrases of his wife stood in
a neat row.

She had mentioned upon one occasion that she thought she must have been
about five when she arrived in Rouen, and remembered her first impression
of the Cathedral as well as the boats on the Seine at night. And Cousin
Pierre had taken her up the river one Sunday to the church on the height
which had been built for a statue of the Virgin that had been excavated
there, and bade her kneel and pray at this station for what she wished
most. She had prayed for a large wax doll that said papa and mama, and
behold, it had arrived the next day.

Madame Delano had told him unequivocally that she had gone directly to
Rouen after her husband's death ... but again, although Helene
remembered arriving in Rouen with her mother, she must have been left
for a time elsewhere, for Helene had another memory--of a convent, where
she had tarried for what seemed a very long time to her childish mind.
Could she have been sent to a convent from the house in Rouen when she
was so little that her memories of that first sojourn were confused? And
why? The family had apparently been fond of "la petite Americaine," and
even if her devoted mother had been obliged to leave her for