engagement and the predicament in which it had landed him.

"I don't ask it on my own account. There's my cousin."

"Yes, yes, Neeld, there's the lady too."

"Well, Edge, if you're satisfied, I can't stand out. For a week
then--silence."

"Absolute!" said Harry. "Without a look or a word?"

"You have my promise," said Wilmot Edge.

"And mine. But--but I shall feel very awkward," sighed poor Mr Neeld. He
might have added that he did feel a sudden and poignant pang of
disappointment. Lived there the man who would not have liked to carry
that bit of news in his portmanteau when he went out of town? At least
that man was not Mr Jenkinson Neeld.

"I'll choose my time, and I won't keep you long," said Harry.

With that they left him. But they had a word together before Edge caught
his 'bus in Piccadilly.

"Cool young chap!" said he. "Took it quietly enough."

"Yes, considering the enormous difference it makes," agreed Neeld. His
use of that particular phrase was perhaps an unconscious reminiscence of
the words in the Journal, the words that Addie used when she burst into
Madame de Kries's room at Heidelberg.

Edge chuckled a little. "Not much put out about the girl either, eh?"

"Now you say so----" Neeld shook his head. "I hope he'll do it
tactfully," he sighed.

Edge did not seem to consider that likely. He in his turn shook his
head.

"I said no more than I thought about Addie Tristram," he remarked. "But
the fact is, they're a rum lot, and there's no getting over it, Neeld."

"They--er--have their peculiarities, no doubt," admitted Mr. Neeld.

XXVI

A BUSINESS CALL

"My dear, isn't there something odd about Mr Neeld?" Mrs Iver put the
question, her anxious charity struggling with a natural inquisitiveness.

"About Neeld? I don't know. Is there?" He did not so much as look up
from his paper. "He's coming with us to Blent to-night, I suppose?"

"Yes. And he seems quite excited about that. And he was positively rude
to Miss Swinkerton at lunch, when she told him that Lady Tristram meant
to give a ball next winter. I expect his nerves are out of order."

Small wonder if they were, surely! Let us suppose Guy Fawkes's scheme
not prematurely discovered, and one Member of a full House privy to it
and awaiting the result. That Member's position would be very like Mr
Neeld's. Would he listen to the debate with attention? Could he answer
questions with sedulous courtesy?

From the moment of his arr