"Sally," said Doris soberly, "I'm going to ask you not to make me explain it all just yet. I would if I had it all clear in my mind, but the whole idea is just as hazy as can be at present. And you know a thing is very hard to explain when it's hazy like that. It sounds silly if you put it into words. So won't you just let it be till I get it better thought out?" "Why, yes, of course," replied Sally with an assumed heartiness that she was far from feeling. Truth to tell, she was not only badly disappointed but filled with an almost uncontrollable curiosity to know what Doris had discovered about her secret that she herself did not know. "And I'm going to ask you another thing," went on Doris. "Do you suppose any one around here knows much about the history of Miss Camilla and her family? Would your grandfather be likely to know?" "Why, yes, I guess so," replied Sally. "If anybody knows I'm sure it would be he, because he's the oldest person around here." "Then," said Doris, "I want you to let me talk to your grandfather about it. We'll both seem to be talking to him together, but I want to ask him some questions very specially myself. But I don't want him to suspect that we have any special interest in the thing, so you try and make him talk the way you did that night when he told you all about the wrecks, and the _Anne Arundel_. Will you?" "Oh, yes," agreed Sally. "That's easy. When shall we do it? This afternoon? I think he'll be down at the Landing, and we won't have any trouble getting him to talk to us. There aren't many around the Landing yet, 'cause the season is so early, and I'll steer him over into a corner where we can be by ourselves." "That's fine!" cried Doris. "I knew you could manage it." "But tell me--just one thing," begged Sally. "What made you first think that Miss Camilla had anything to do with this? You can tell me just _that_, can't you?" "It was the little Sèvres vase on the mantel," explained Doris, "and the way she spoke of it. I know a little,--just a tiny bit about old china and porcelains, because my grandfather is awfully interested in them and has collected quite a lot. But it was the way she _spoke_ of it that made me think." Not another word would she say on the subject. And though Sally racked her brains over the matter for the rest of the day, she could find no point where Miss Camilla and her remarks had the slightest bearing on that secret of theirs. * * * * *