"Turn out? Well, it turned out in a thumping big family of thirteen children," the Colonel answered; "most of whom, happily for the father, died young, But the five who survived, and who married at last into very good connections, all had one peculiarity, which they transmitted to all their female descendants. Very odd these hereditary traits, to be sure. Very singular! Very singular!" "Ah, to be sure," the manager answered, turning over a pile of letters. "And what was the hereditary trait handed down, as you say, in the family of the Roumanian lady?" "Why, in the first place," the Colonel continued, leaning back in his chair, and making himself perfectly comfortable, "all the girls of the Ewes connection, to the third and fourth generation, have olive-brown complexions, creamy and soft, but clear as crystal. Then again, they've all got most extraordinary intuition--a perfectly marvellous gift of reading faces. By George, sir," the Colonel exclaimed, growing hot and red at the memory of that afternoon on the Holkers' lawn, "I don't like to see those women's eyes fixed upon my cheek when there's anything going on I don't want them to know. A man's transparent like glass before them. They see into his very soul. They look right through him." "If the lady who founded the family habits was a fortune-teller," the manager interposed, with a scientific air, "that's not so remarkable; for fortune-tellers must always be quick-witted people, keen to perceive the changes of countenance in the dupes who employ them, and prompt at humouring all the fads and fancies of their customers, mustn't they?" "Quite so," the Colonel echoed. "You've hit it on the nail. And this particular lady--Esmeralda they call her, so that Elma, which is short for Esmeralda, understand, has come to be the regular Christian name among all her women descendants--this particular lady belonged to what you might call a caste or priestly family, as it were, of hereditary fortune-tellers, every one of whose ancestors had been specially selected for generations for the work, till a kind of transmissible mesmeric habit got developed among them. And they do say," the Colonel went on, lowering his voice a little more to a confidential whisper, "that all the girls descended from Madame Esmeralda--Lady Ewes of Charlwood, as she was in England--retain to this day another still odder and uncannier mark of their peculiar origin; but, of course, it's a story that would be hard to substantiate, though I've heard it discussed more than once among the friends of the family." "Dear me! What's that?" the manager asked, in a tone of marked curiosity.