The twinkle came again. "She's much too good a servant ever to raise that question. What was your name?" "My maiden name? Wilkins." "I think names ending in 'kins' are very ugly," said Mrs. Lenoir. "But a modification? What about Wilson? 'Winnie Wilson' is quite pretty." "'Miss Winnie Wilson'? Isn't it rather--well, rather late in the day for that? But, I don't want to be Ledstone--and it's rather unfair to call myself Maxon still." "Names," observed Mrs. Lenoir, "are really not worth troubling about, so long as you don't hurt people's pride. I used to have a fetish-like feeling about them--as if, I mean, you couldn't get rid of the one you were born with, or, my dear, take one you had no particular right to. But one night, long ago, somebody--I really forget who--brought an Oxford don to supper. We got on the subject, and he told me that a great philosopher--named Dobbs, if I remember rightly--defined a name as 'a word taken at pleasure to serve for a mark.'" She looked across the hearthrug, confidently expecting Winnie's approval. "I liked it, and it stuck in my memory." "It does make things simpler, Mrs. Lenoir." "Mind you, I wouldn't take a great name I hadn't a right to. Courtenays and Devereauxes in the chorus are very bad form. But I don't see why you shouldn't be Wilson. And the 'Miss' avoids a lot of questions." "All right. Miss Winnie Wilson be it! It sounds like a new toy. And now, Mrs. Lenoir, for the other problem that Emily has raised. Who's the General?" Mrs. Lenoir liked her young friend, but possibly thought that she was becoming a trifle impertinent. Not that she minded that; in her heart she greeted it as a rebound from misery; in the young it often is. "If you've any taste in men--which, up to now, you've given your friends no reason to think--you'll like the General very much." "Will he like me?" "The only advantage of age is that I shan't mind if he does, Winnie." Winnie darted towards her. "What a dear you've been to me to-day!" "Hush, I think I hear the General's step." The parlour-maid--not Emily, but a young woman, smart and a trifle scornful--announced, "Sir Hugh Merriam, ma'am--and dinner's served." CHAPTER XVII THE TRACK OF THE RAIDER The General was old-fashioned; he liked to be left alone with the port--or let us say port-wine, as he always did--after dinner for a quarter of an hour; then he would rejoin the ladies for coffee and, by their never assumed but always solicited permission, a cigar in the drawing-room. Thus Winnie had a chance of gratifying her lively curiosity about the handsome old man with gentle manners, who had seen and done so much, who talked so much about his sons, and came to dine with Mrs. Lenoir twice a week. "I've fallen in love with your General. Do tell me about him," she implored her hostess.