I told you yet that I'm only her secretary? I never saw Mrs. Carr
Bolt until five years ago."

"Perhaps you did tell me. But I got it into my head, that first day,
that you were aunt and niece--"

"People do, I think," Margaret said thoughtfully, "because we're both
fair." She did not say that but for Mrs. Carr-Bolt's invaluable maid
the likeness would have been less marked, on this score at least. "I
taught school," she went on simply, "and Mrs. Carr-Bolt happened to
come to my school, and she asked me to come to her."

"You're all alone in the world, Miss Page?" He was eyeing her
amusingly; the direct question came quite naturally.

"Oh, dear me, no! My father and mother are living"; and feeling, as
she always did, a little claim on her loyalty, she added: "We are, or
were, rather, Southern people,--but my father settled in a very small
New York town--"

"Mrs. Carr-Bolt told me that--I'd forgotten--" said Professor
Tenison, and he carried the matter entirely out of Margaret's
hands,--much, much further indeed than she would have carried it,
by continuing, "She tells me that Quincyport was named for your
mother's grandfather, and that Judge Paget was your father's father."

"Father's uncle," Margaret corrected, although as a matter of fact
Judge Paget had been no nearer than her father's second cousin.
"But father always called him uncle," Margaret assured herself
inwardly. To the Quincy-port claim she said nothing. Quincyport