The Professor had taught Malvina cribbage, and usually of an evening they played a hand or two. But to-night the Professor was not in the mood, and Malvina had contented herself with a book. She was particularly fond of the old chroniclers. The Professor had an entire shelf of them, many in the original French. Making believe to be reading himself, he heard Malvina break into a cheerful laugh, and went and looked over her shoulder. She was reading the history of her own encounter with the proprietor of tin mines, an elderly gentleman disliking late hours, whom she had turned into a nightingale. It occurred to the Professor that prior to the Arlington case the recalling of this incident would have brought to her shame and remorse. Now she seemed to think it funny. "A silly trick," commented the Professor. He spoke quite heatedly. "No one has any right to go about changing people. Muddling up things they don't understand. No right whatever." Malvina looked up. She gave a little sigh. "Not for one's own pleasure or revenge," she made answer. Her tone was filled with meekness. It had a touch of self-reproach. "That is very wrong, of course. But changing them for their own good--at least, not changing, improving." "Little hypocrite!" muttered the Professor to himself. "She's got back a taste for her old tricks, and Lord knows now where she'll stop." The Professor spent the rest of the evening among his indexes in search of the latest information regarding Queen Harbundia. Meanwhile the Arlington affair had got about the village. The twins in all probability had been unable to keep their secret. Jane, the dismissed, had looked in to give Mrs. Muldoon her version of Thursday night's scene in the Arlington kitchen, and Mrs. Muldoon, with a sense of things impending, may unconsciously have dropped hints.