common one to my ears."

"Nor to mine; yet we have no proof to sustain your supposition. I
should be very sorry--"

He stopped.

Mabel studied his perturbed countenance with augmented uneasiness.

"Was not the family respectable?"

"Perfectly, my shrewd little catechist!" seeming to shake off an
uncomfortable incubus, as he laughed down at her serious face. "They
vaunted themselves upon the antiquity of their line, and were more
liberal in allusions to departed grandeur than was quite well-bred.
When I knew them they were not wealthy, or in what they would have
called 'society.' Indeed, the mother kept a private boarding-house
near the law-school I attended. There were several sons--very
decent, enterprising fellows. But one lived at home, and a daughter,
the wife of a lieutenant in the navy, whom I never saw. I boarded
with them for six months, or thereabout."

"You never saw the daughter! How was that?"

"I must have expressed myself awkwardly if I conveyed any such idea.
I did not meet the seafaring husband who was off upon a long cruise.
The wife I met constantly--knew very well. You need not look at me
so intently, love, as if you feared that some dark mystery lurked
behind this matter-of-fact recital. If I do not tell you every event
of my former life, it is not because it was vile. I could not