Letitia, who was twelve years her sister's junior, and, even if she had not been, would not have felt sensitive about her accumulating birthdays, answered: "Oh, long ago. Colonel Reed's always been a widower ever since I can remember." "I remember hearing about his wife when I was a boy," said Mortimer. "She was a young actress, and married the colonel when everything was going his way. Then she died in a year or two of consumption. I didn't know there was a child." "She must be quite young, then," said Maud Gault. "What did you hear about her, Letitia?" "Nothing much; only that she was pretty, and lived in an old ramshackle house somewhere across town, and that nobody knows anything about her. One of the girls was talking about it the other day at Mamie Murray's lunch, and I thought it was so funny, everybody knowing about Colonel Reed, that he should have had a daughter that none of us had ever heard of. That's why I asked John. He knows more of those queer, left-over people than anybody else." She again tilted the candle-shade and looked at John Gault. For the first time since the conversation had turned on Colonel Reed's daughter, he met her eyes. His were brown and deep-set, and being near-sighted, he generally wore a pince-nez. He had taken this off, and looked at Letitia with his eyes narrowed to mere slits, after the manner of short-sighted people. Having finished his coffee, he was leaning back, the candle-light striking a smooth gleam from his broad expanse of shirt-bosom. The restless fire of diamonds broke the glossy surface, for John Gault, like many rich Californians of a passing era, clung to the splendid habits of the bonanza days. Sitting thus, he looked a spare, muscular man verging on forty, with dark hair and an iron-gray mustache. "I don't know whether that's meant to be a compliment," he said, with the lazy smile with which he generally treated Letitia's sallies. "Have I got a larger collection of freaks than most people?" "What did _you_ hear about Colonel Reed's daughter?" asked Maud Gault. "Really, I don't recollect anything in particular," he said; "probably just what Letitia heard--that she was pretty and lived somewhere across town." "If a man's going to remember everything he hears about girls that are pretty and live somewhere across town, he'd have to get Professor What's-his-name's Memory System down by heart," said Mortimer, pushing back his chair. "Come, Maud, you don't want to sit here all night, do you?"