There was a long silence, during which he sat grave, motionless, reflecting.  Now and then he placed his extinguished cigarette to his lips, with the mechanical motion of a man forgetful of time and place and circumstance.

“Well, what are you thinking about?” she inquired, when the pause had lasted long enough.  He seemed to wake with a start.

“Oh—­I—­I don’t know.  I rather fancy I was thinking about—­about this Miss—­after all, you haven’t given me any name but Miriam.”

“Strange, her name is.  The same as yours.”

“Oh?  You’ve never told me that.”

“Aunt Queenie has, though.  But you always seem to shuffle so when it’s mentioned that I’ve let it alone.  I don’t blame you, either; for if there’s one thing more tedious than another, it’s having people for ever fussing about your name.  There was a girl at our school whose name was Fidgett—­Jessie Fidgett—­a nice, quiet girl, as placid as a church—­but I do assure you, it got to be so tiresome—­well, you know how it would be—­and so I decided I wouldn’t say anything about Miriam’s name to you, nor about yours to her.  Goodness knows, there must be lots of Stranges in the world—­just as much as Jarrotts.”

“So that—­after all—­her name was Miriam Strange.”

“It was, and is, and always will be—­if she goes on like this,” Miss Colfax rejoined, not noticing that he had spoken half-musingly to himself.  “She was a ward of my step-father’s till she came of age,” she added, in an explanatory tone.  “She’s a sort of Canadian—­or half a Canadian—­or something—­I never could quite make out what.  Anyhow, she’s a dear.  She’s gone now with my stepfather to Wiesbaden, about his eyes—­and you can’t think what a relief to me it is.  If she hadn’t, I might have had to go myself—­and at my age—­with all I’ve got to think about—­and my coming out—­Well, you can see how it would be.”

She lifted such sweet blue eyes upon him that he would have seen anything she wanted him to see, if he had not been determined to push his inquiries until there was nothing left for him to learn.

“Were you fond of him?—­your stepfather?”

“Of course—­in a way.  But everything was so unfortunate I know dear mamma thought she was acting for the best when she married him; and if he hadn’t begun to go blind almost immediately—­But he was very kind to mamma, when she had to go to the Adirondacks for her health.  That was very soon after she returned to New York from here—­when papa died.  But she was so lonely in the Adirondacks—­and he was a judge—­a Mr. Wayne—­with a good position—­and naturally she never dreamed he had anything the matter with his eyes—­it isn’t the sort of thing you’d ever think of asking about beforehand—­and so it all happened that way, do you see?”