It quite took my breath away when Mrs.Harvey, our mayor's wife--such a charming woman, my dear, and I do hope I may have the pleasure of bringing you to one of her delightful tea-and-bridge afternoons--said to me on Monday: 'Surely, Mrs.Curtis, this John Delancy Curtis who is on board the _Lusitania_ must be a son of that brother of your husband who died in China some years ago ?' and I said: 'What in the world are you talking about, Mrs.Harvey ?' so she showed me the newspaper, and I was that taken aback that I revoked in the next hand, and the only mean player we have in the club claimed three tricks 'without,' and went game, being a woman herself who hasn't chick nor child, but devotes far too much time and money to toy dogs; anyhow, I couldn't give my mind to cards any more that day, so off I rushed home and 'phoned Horace, and here we are, after such a flurry as you never would imagine, what between packing in a hurry for the trip east, and missing the steamer's arrival by nearly an hour, and turning up in the Central Hotel just in time to hear----" Then Aunt Louisa, assuredly at no loss for words, but remembering in a hazy way the compact made in the vestibule, found it incumbent on her to break away from the main trend of the narrative, so she concluded: "Just in time to hear things being said about our nephew which we felt bound to deny, both for his sake and our own." Curtis had favored Devar with a questioning scowl when he learnt how his advent had been heralded in the press, but Devar merely vouchsafed a brazen wink, and in the next breath Hermione herself became his unconscious and most persuasive advocate.
"I have been bothering my brains to discover when or where I had seen Mr.Curtis's name before--before we met to-night," she said, smiling at the ridiculous vagueness of her own phrase.

"Now I remember.

I used to read the newspaper reports about every ship that arrived, and I noticed that identical paragraph." "Thank you, Lady Hermione," cried Devar, crowing inwardly over his friend's discomfiture.

"John D.will begin to believe soon what I have been telling him during the last half-hour--that I am the real _Deus ex machina_ of the whole business.

Why, if it hadn't been for me you two would never have got married, and this merry party couldn't have happened!" A knock at the door caused Hermione to turn with a startled look.