She used to come to see Waldo almost every day, sitting with him an hour or more. Being a young woman of active habits, she generally came on foot, and, since he could not escort her home, that duty fell to my lot; we had several walks back from Cragsfoot to Briarmount, just as twilight began to fall on those winter evenings, her clear-cut, handsome features still showing up boldly above her rich dark furs. She really looked very much My Lady! But it is one walk that stands out conspicuous in memory. It was the afternoon on which Waldo had asked her to be his wife—though I did not know it. Up to now, when I had occasion to pronounce her name, I had called her Lady Dundrannan, and she had not protested, although she continued to use my Christian name, as she always had since Waldo, Arsenio, and Lucinda set the example. But on this day, when her title happened to fall from my lips, she turned to me with an amused smile: “Don’t you think you might call me Nina? You used to. And, really, mayn’t I almost be considered one of the family now?” “I don’t care about calling you Nina just because I used to, or just because you’re almost one of the family, Lady Dundrannan——” “There you go again!” she protested. “Well, I rather admire the name. It sounds wild, feudal, Caledonian. But I’ll call you Nina if you like me well enough.” “I’ve always liked you quite well, though I don’t think you used to like me much.” “Let bygones be bygones, Nina!” “Well, they are, aren’t they?” she said, with quite undisguised meaning—and undisguised triumph too. I was stupid not to suspect the cause. “But I believe you’re sorry for it!” “I was sorry for it, of course, at the time it happened. We were all of us—well, much more than sorry. Stunned! Aghast!” “You do use big words over that girl,” remarked Lady Dundrannan. “You’re letting yourself go this evening! Hitherto you’ve been more subtle in trying to get at what I think—or thought—of Lucinda.” Mark my own subtlety here! I substituted “thought” for “think”; and what she had been trying to get at was not what I thought of Lucinda, but what I knew about her—if anything. But I meant to lead her on; I gave her a smile with the words. “If you felt all that about it, I should have thought you’d have tried to get some explanation out of her—or him. Something to comfort the family! You yourself might have acted as a go-between.” “But they vanished.” “Oh, people don’t vanish so completely as all that!” “There’s the war, you know. We’ve all been busy. No time for useless curiosity.” I did not advance these pleas in a very convincing tone. She looked at me suspiciously. “You’ve never heard a word from either of them?” I took it that she meant to ask if I had received any letters. “Never,” said I—upon the assumption, truthfully. “Where do you suppose Arsenio Valdez is?”