as elated as I might have been. I remembered that Cynthia had begun her confidences in much the same way. Besides, a father confessor should be elderly, it is not at all the role for a young man.

“My father was English,” said Mrs. Cavendish, “but my mother was a Russian.”

“Ah,” I said, “now I understand—”

“Understand what?”

“A hint of something foreign—different—that there has always been about you.”

“My mother was very beautiful, I believe. I don’t know, because I never saw her. She died when

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