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she had already died, falling from a carriage—and two more cousins out in India.”
    â€œPa was rare put about when he learned she’d done that ,” commented Bet sourly.
    â€œWhy? Who are the cousins in India?”
    â€œThey are twins—by-blows of the old nabob,” Martha began, and received a very quelling look from her sister. “Well—why shouldn’t I tell it, Bet? She”—with a meaningful glance at Fanny—“she’s a married lady now; no harm in her knowing it.”
    Fanny eased her aching spine against the hard upright back of her Windsor chair and wondered rather dismally what the state of being married had to do with the story of the twins out in India.
    â€œâ€™Tisn’t a proper tale for you to tell,” Bet said primly, and pressed her pale lips together.
    â€œOh, stuff! Anyway, Miss Fox told me, and she wasn’t married! It was this way, you see, Fanny. The old nabob in India—General Henry Paget, that is, who left his fortune to Cousin Juliana—had a pair of love children by a lady who was half a Portugee and half a heathen Hindoo—”
    â€œ Martha! Will you mind your tongue! What would Papa say?”
    â€œWhat could he say? It is no more than the truth, and that is why he was so put out when he heard that Cousin Juliana had writ to the twins as well as to us. They call themselves Paget, though I daresay they’ve no claim to, since their mother was never married to the nabob, or not that anybody knows—”
    â€œBut if he was so rich, surely he left his children provided for?” said Fanny, puzzled. “Even if they were not born in wedlock?”
    â€œNo, that he didn’t. It seems, when he came back to England, he had the intention to send the Portugee lady some money, but when he wrote to where he left her, she was gone, nobody knew where. And so then he said, ‘Devil fly away with her, she’s gone off with somebody else. I wash my hands of her and the twins—’”
    â€œBut there might have been a dozen reasons why she was not where he had left her,” objected Fanny, distressed at this seeming injustice.
    â€œOh, ay, well, I daresay he was in the right of it. He knew her, after all,” replied Martha. “Anyway, after he had left all the money to Cousin Juliana she met with some army officer who had been in north India, and he said he had heard tell that the Portugee lady had died, but he thought he knew the direction where the twins might be found. So Cousin Juliana wrote to them. But ’tis all Zanzibar to a nutmeg that the letter never reached them,” said Martha reflectively. “Or we’d have heard by this time. I think it’s a sad shame.”
    Bet, who had been listening with a self-righteously disapproving look, said dryly:
    â€œOh yes, for sure you’d clap your hands for joy if they was to come walking in the door now!” She broke off her thread with a sharp twist.
    â€œWhy—did Cousin Juliana invite them here ?” Fanny asked in astonishment.
    â€œAy, that was the one thing that stuck in Pa’s craw. ‘Use my house, and welcome,’ says Cousin Juliana to him, ‘for I shan’t be needing it myself while I’m off with my dear Count van Welcker in Demerara, and I’d be lief to think there was a happy family living here.’” She rolled up her eyes with a derisive grimace and so missed her sister’s expression. Bet’s pale, sardonic eye moved around the room and then fixed on Martha with a look so strange, so bleak, that Fanny felt a curious cold shiver move between her shoulder blades.
    â€œâ€˜All I ask is,’” continued Martha with histrionic relish, “‘all I ask,’ says Cousin Juliana, ‘is that, if ever Great-Uncle Henry’s children should come to England, you give them houseroom in the Hermitage, and a kind welcome—’”
    Here Bet