rs. Errol. She had left
directions for her letters to be sent after her, and she found two or
three awaiting her in the hall. She picked them up, and passed into the
music-room.

Here she found Lucas reading some correspondence of his own.

He looked up with a smile. "Oh, Lady Carfax! I was just thinking of you.
I have a letter here from my friend Capper. You remember Dr. Capper?"

"Very well indeed," she said, stifling a sudden pang at the name.

He lay motionless in his chair, studying her with those shrewd blue eyes
that she never desired to avoid. "I believe Capper took you more or less
into his confidence," he said. "It's a risky thing for a doctor to do,
but he is a student of human nature as well as human anatomy. He
generally knows what he is about. Won't you sit down?"

She took the seat near him that he indicated. Somehow the mention of
Capper had made her cold. She was conscious of a shrinking that was
almost physical from the thought of ever seeing him again.

"Capper wants to have the shaping of my destiny," Lucas went on
meditatively. "In other words, he wants to pull me to pieces and make a
new man of me. Sometimes I am strongly tempted to let him try. At other
times," he was looking at her fully, "I hesitate."

She put her shrinking from her and faced him. "Will you tell me why?"

"Because," he said slowly, "I have a fear that I might be absent
when wanted."

"But you are always wanted," she said quickly.

He smiled. "Thank you, Lady Carfax. But that was not my meaning. I think
you understand me. I think Capper must have told you. I am speaking with
regard to--my brother Nap."

He spoke the last words very deliberately. He was still looking at her
kindly but very intently. She felt the blood rush to her heart. For the
first time her eyes fell before his.

He went on speaking at once, as if to reassure her, to give her time.
"You've been a stanch friend to him, I know, and you've done a big thing
for him. You've tamed him, shaped him, made a man of him. I felt your
influence upon him before I ever met you. I sensed your courage, your
steadfastness, your goodness. But you are only a woman, eh, Lady Carfax?
And Rome wasn't built in a day. There may come a time when the savage
gets the upper hand of him again. And then, if I were not by to hold him
in, he might gallop to his own or someone else's destruction. That is
what I have to think of before I decide."

"But--can you always hold him?" An