ing here
just now."

"Really?" Philippa murmured indifferently, bending a little lower over
her work.

"In the first place," her husband continued, "how did he arrive here?"

"For all I know," she replied, "he may have walked."

"A little unlikely. Still, he didn't come from London by either of the
evening trains, and it seems that you didn't take his rooms for him
until about seven o'clock, before which time he hadn't been to the
hotel. So, you see, one is driven to wonder how the mischief he did get
here."

"I took his rooms?" Philippa repeated, with a sudden little catch at her
heart.

"Some one from here rang up, didn't they?" Sir Henry went on carelessly.
"I gathered that we were introducing him at the hotel."

"Where did you hear that?" she demanded.

He shrugged his shoulders, but avoided answering the question.

"I have no doubt," he continued, "that the whole subject of Mr. Hamar
Lessingham is scarcely worth discussing. Yet he does seem to have
arrived here under a little halo of coincidence."

"I am afraid I have scarcely appreciated that," Philippa remarked; "in
fact, his coming here has seemed to me the most ordinary thing in the
world. After all, although one scarcely remembers that since the war,
this is a health resort, and the man has been ill."

"Quite right," Sir Henry agreed. "You are not going to bed, dear?"

Philippa had folded up her work. She stood for a moment upon the
hearth-rug. The little hardness which had tightened her mouth had
disappeared, her eyes had softened.

"May I say just one word more," she begged, "about our previous--our
only serious subject of conversation? I have tried my best since we were
married, Henry, to make you happy."

"You know quite well," he assured her, "that you have succeeded."

"Grant me one favour, then," she pleaded. "Give up your fishing
expedition to-morrow, go back to London by the first train and let me
write to Lord Rayton. I am sure he would do something for you."

"Of course he'd do something!" Her husband groaned. "I should get a
censorship in Ireland, or a post as instructor at Portsmouth."

"Wouldn't you rather take either of those than nothing?" she asked,
"than go on living the life you are living now?"

"To be perfectly frank with you, Philippa, I wouldn't," he declared
bluntly. "What on earth use should I be in a land appointment? Why, no
one could read my writing, and my nautical science is entirely out of
date. Why a cadet