"Who is talking about mystery?" exclaimed Caroline Parker; who, standing near, must have caught the word. "What _is_ the mystery, Lotty?" And Lotty, giving her some evasive reply, put down her fork and turned away. LADY JENKINS. MADAME. I. "If Aunt Jenkins were the shrewd woman she used to be, I'd lay the whole case before her, and have it out; but she is not," contended Dan Jenkins, tilting the tongs in his hand, as we sat round the dying embers of the surgery fire. His brother Sam and I had walked home together from Mrs. Knox's soirée, and we overtook Dan in the town. Another soirée had been held in Lefford that night, which Dan had promised himself to before knowing Mrs. Knox would have one. We all three turned into the surgery. Dr. Knox was out with a patient, and Sam had to wait up for him. Sam had been telling his brother what we witnessed up at Rose Villa--the promenade round the laurels that Captain Collinson and Mina had stolen in the moonlight. As for me, though I heard what Sam said, and put in a confirming word here and there, I was thinking my own thoughts. In a small way, nothing had ever puzzled me much more than the letter Charlotte Knox had seen. Who was Madame St. Vincent? and who was her sister, that I, Johnny Ludlow, might not meet her? "You see," continued Dan, "one reason why I can't help suspecting the fellow, is this--he does not address Mina openly. If he were honest and above board, he would go in for her before all the world. He wouldn't do it in secret." "What do you suspect him of?" cried Sam. "I don't know. I do suspect him--that he is somehow not on the square. It's not altogether about Mina; but I have no confidence in the man." Sam laughed. "Of course you have not, Dan. You want to keep Mina for yourself." Dan pitched his soft hat at Sam's head, and let fall the tongs with a clatter. "Collinson seems to be all right," I put in. "He is going up to London to a levée, and he is going to buy an estate. At least, he told me so to-night in the supper-room." "Oh, in one sense of the word the fellow is all right," acknowledged Dan. "He is what he pretends to be; he is in the army list; and, for all I know to the contrary, he may have enough gold to float an argosy of ships. What I ask is, why he should go sneaking after Mina _when he does not care for her_." "That may be just a fallacy of ours, Dan," said his brother. "No, it's not. Collinson is in love with Madame St. Vincent; not with Mina." "Then why does he spoon after Mina?" "That's just it--why?" "Any way, I don't think madame is in love with him, Dan. It was proposed that he should take aunt home to-night, and madame was as tart as you please over it, letting all the room know that she did not want him."