“Well, then, will you tell me all about yourself?  I’m getting more puzzled every moment.  I hope it isn’t rude to say so, but—­you and this place don’t fit.”

For a moment the girl did not answer.  Then she put the paper which had held the biscuits carefully into the cupboard by the fireplace, and as she did so he saw her raise her shoulders with an involuntary and expressive shrug.

“I suppose it is rather surprising,” she said at last, as she folded her hands in her lap and kept her eyes fixed upon the red heart of the fire.  “It surprises me sometimes.”

There was a pause, but Max would not interrupt her, for he thought from her manner that an explanation of some sort was coming.  At last she went on, raising her head a little, but without looking at him: 

“And very likely it will astonish you still more to hear that in coming to this place I made a change for the better.”

Max was too much surprised to make any comment.

“If you want to know my name, date of birth, parentage and the rest of it,” went on the girl, in a tone of half-playful recklessness, “why, I have no details to give you.  I don’t know anything about myself, and nobody I know seems to know any more.  Granny says she does, but I don’t believe her.”

She paused.

“Why, surely,” began Max, “your own grandmother—­”

“But I don’t even know that she is my own grandmother,” interrupted the girl, sharply.  “If she were, wouldn’t she know my name?”

“That seems probable, certainly.”

“Well, she doesn’t, or she says she doesn’t.  She pretends she has forgotten, or puts me off when I ask questions, though any one can understand my asking them.”

This was puzzling, certainly.  Max had no satisfactory explanation to offer, so he shook his head and tried to look wise.  As long as she would go on talking, and about herself, too, he didn’t care what she said.

“What does she call you?” asked he, after a silence.

“Carrie—­Carrie Rivers.  But the ‘Rivers’ is not my name, I know.  It was given me by Miss Aldridge, who brought me up, and she told me it wasn’t my real name, but that she gave it to me because it was ’proper to have one.’  So how can I believe Granny when she says that it is not my name?  Or at least that she has forgotten whether I had any other?  If she had really forgotten all that, wouldn’t she have forgotten my existence altogether, and not have taken the trouble to hunt me out, and to take me away from the place where she found me?”

“Where was that?” asked Max.

The girl hung her head, and answered in a lower voice, as if her reply were a distasteful, discreditable admission: 

“I was bookkeeper at a hotel—­a wretched place, where I was miserable, very miserable.”

Max was more puzzled than ever.

Every fresh detail about herself and her life made him wonder the more why she was refined, educated.  Presently she looked up, and caught the expression on his face.