"You're getting quite incomprehensible, my dear girl." "Well, I'll make it clear to you.

One morning papa received a letter--but wait.

Sonia, get me the Lupin papers out of the bureau." Sonia rose from the writing-table, and went to a bureau, an admirable example of the work of the great English maker, Chippendale.

It stood on the other side of the hall between an Oriental cabinet and a sixteenth-century Italian cabinet--for all the world as if it were standing in a crowded curiosity shop--with the natural effect that the three pieces, by their mere incongruity, took something each from the beauty of the other.

Sonia raised the flap of the bureau, and taking from one of the drawers a small portfolio, turned over the papers in it and handed a letter to the Duke.
"This is the envelope," she said.