"Yes, my aunt. Fancy! Whenever I think of it now I laugh. It was really screamingly funny, you know, to be told by a perfect stranger, who looks rather like a drum major, that she’s an aunt you have never heard of. I didn’t laugh then, though. I thought she was crazy, and was wondering how in the world I should get away from her, when all at once I remembered that mother did have a sister very much older than herself who had lived abroad almost all her life. She was eccentric to begin with, and married unhappily; and finally, when mother was engaged, she was terribly opposed to it; and the result was a quarrel which kept them apart all the rest of their lives. All this went through my mind like a flash; and I was so taken back that I could only stammer: ’You’re—not—Aunt Beverly?’ "’Of course I am!’ she snapped back. ’What other aunts have you got, I’d like to know?’ "And then she began to ask me questions as fast as she could talk. She wanted to know what I was doing in New York, why I was wearing such dreadful clothes, how I dared be out on the streets alone at such an hour, and a dozen other things. I suppose you’ll think I’m hateful, Mr. Lawrence, but all at once I felt perfectly furious that she should have all those wonderful diamonds and pearls and lovely clothes, and probably quantities of money, while I hadn’t even a coat to wear. And so I told her everything she wanted to know, without mincing matters in the least; and for once she had nothing to say. "She dropped the gold bag she was carrying; and, though she was quick enough in bending over for it, she was a long time straightening up again; and, when at last she did speak, there was something in her voice which hadn’t been there before. "’Come, my dear,’ she said quietly. ’It’s time we were starting home.’ "The things which happened after that were much more like a dream than any real dream I ever had. She called Mrs. Weston Janet when she said good night; and, when we went out, there was a private brougham waiting in the street, exactly as if it had been conjured up by a magic wand. There was no carriage in sight when we came through the street, was there?" Barry shook his head. "No, but one passed me near Eighth Avenue," he answered, struck by a sudden recollection.