“My name is Markham as well as yours,” he said. “I’ve come a long way to make your acquaintance. This respectable person here--what do you call him, Brown?--wanted to send me away; but I hope now that you have come you will extend your protection to me, and not allow him to turn me away.” “Are you a cousin?” said Bell. “Well--perhaps not exactly a cousin; and yet something of that sort.” “Are you one of the Underwood Markhams?” the little girl continued. “The people that nurse says would get Markham if we were all to die?” “They must be very disagreeable people, I think,” said the stranger, with a smile. “Oh, _dreadful_! They never come here. Nurse says they were in such a way when we were all born. They thought papa was going to let them have it--as if it were not much more natural that Paul should have it! You are not one of those people, are you, Mr.--Markham? Is that really your name?” “I am not one of those people, and my name is Gus. What is yours? I want to know what to call you, and your little sister. And don’t you think you had better take me to see the house?” “Oh,” cried Bell, looking more serious than ever; “but we could not call a gentleman, quite an old gentleman, like you, Gus.” “Do you think I am an old gentleman?” he said. “Well, not perhaps such a very old gentleman,” said Bell, hesitating. Marie, trusting herself to speak for the first time, said in a half-whisper-- “Oh, no--not very old; just about the same as papa.” The stranger burst into a laugh. This seemed to amuse him more than the humour of the speech justified. “There is a difference,” he said; “a slight difference. I am not so old as--papa.” “Do you know papa? Do you know any of them? You must have met them,” said Bell, “if you are in society. Alice came out this year, and they went everywhere, and saw everybody, in society. Mamma told me so. Alice is the eldest,” the little girl went on, pleased to enter into the fullest explanations as soon as she had got started. “That is, not the eldest of all, you know, but the eldest of the girls. She was at all the balls, and even went out to dinner! but then it is no wonder, she is eighteen, and quite as tall as mamma.” “Is she pretty?” said the gentleman. He went on drinking glass after glass of the claret-cup, while Brown stood looking on alarmed, yet respectful. (“Such a little fellow as that, I thought he’d bust hisself,” Brown said.) “She is not so pretty as mamma,” said the little girl. “Everybody says mamma is beautiful. I am the one that is most like her,” continued Bell, with naïve satisfaction. “There is a picture of her in the drawing-room; you can come and see.”