There was afternoon tea at the club-house,--groups chatted and laughed on the piazza and the lawn; red coats became more abundant on the golf links despite the lateness of the hour; carriages were brought round, one by one took their freights of pleasure-seekers, and departed. Fairfield still kept in the neighborhood of Miss Calthorpe, and although he said little he looked a great deal. Mrs. Harbinger did not interfere, although for the most part she was within ear-shot. Fairfield was of good old family, well spoken of as a rising literary man, and May had money enough for two, so that there were no good grounds upon which a chaperone could have made herself disagreeable, and Mrs. Harbinger was not in the least of the interfering sort. Before leaving the County Club Mrs. Harbinger had a brief talk with Mrs. Neligage. "I wish you'd tell me something about the Count's past," she said. "You knew him in Europe, didn't you?" "Yes, I met him in Rome one winter; and after that I saw a good deal of him for a couple of seasons." "Was he received?" "Oh, bless you, yes. He's real. His family tree goes back to the tree in the Garden of Eden." "Perhaps his ancestor then was the third person there." Mrs. Neligage laughed, and shook her head. "Come, Letty," she said, "that is taking an unfair advantage. But really, the Count is all right. He's as poor as a church mouse, and I've no doubt he came over here expressly to marry money. That is a foreign nobleman's idea of being driven to honest toil,--to come to America and hunt up an heiress." Mrs. Harbinger produced the letter which she had received from Barnstable earlier in the afternoon. "That crazy Mr. Barnstable that made an exhibition of himself at my house yesterday has given me a letter about the Count. I haven't read much of it; but it's evidently an attack on the man's morals." "Oh, his morals," Mrs. Neligage returned with a pretty shrug; "nobody can find fault with the Count's morals, my dear, for he hasn't any." "Is he so bad then?" inquired Mrs. Harbinger with a sort of dispassionate interest. "Bad, bless you, no. He's neither good nor bad. He's what all his kind are; squeamishly particular on a point of honor, and with not a moral scruple to his name." Mrs. Harbinger held the letter by the corner, regarding it with little favor. "I'm sure I don't want his old letter," she observed. "I'm not a purveyor of gossip." "Why did he give it to you?" "He wanted me to read it, and then to show it to my friends. He telegraphed to New York last night, Tom said, to find out about the Count, and the letter must have come on the midnight." "Characters by telegraph," laughed Mrs. Neligage. "The times are getting hard for adventurers and impostors. But really the Count isn't an impostor. He'd say frankly that he brought over his title to sell." "That doesn't decide what I am to do with this letter," Mrs. Harbinger remarked. "You'd better take it."