And now I know." Her emphasis, as she repeated the word, made her head, in her seat of infallibility, rise higher.

"I know." The Colonel took it--but took it at first in silence.

"Do you mean they've TOLD you-- ?" "No--I mean nothing so absurd.

For in the first place I haven't asked them, and in the second their word in such a matter wouldn't count." "Oh," said the Colonel with all his oddity, "they'd tell US." It made her face him an instant as with her old impatience of his short cuts, always across her finest flower-beds; but she felt, none the less, that she kept her irony down.

"Then when they've told you, you'll be perhaps so good as to let me know." He jerked up his chin, testing the growth of his beard with the back of his hand while he fixed her with a single eye.