able to supply chastening reflections.

"I don't like it," he observed.

"Don't like what?"

"If he really meant to buy those pictures, I can't help thinking you
would have heard from him again."

The artist turned abruptly.

"It was only three days ago. I don't expect to hear yet."

"Dear old Lucas, I don't want to discourage you, but I call it fishy.
Supposing he has met some one since who really knew something about
pictures?"

His friend resumed work in silence.

"There is also another possibility," continued Hillary in his gentle
voice. "He struck me as suspiciously extravagant--supposing he has
gone bankrupt? I noticed, too, that his complexion was somewhat
rubicund--supposing he has had an apoplectic fit? In that case, would
his executors be bound by his verbal promise? Honestly, Lucas, I don't
think so."

There came a sharp rap on the door.

"It will relax the strain on your intellect if you go and see who that
is," suggested the painter.

"A telegram," said Hillary, strolling back from the door.

"Good heavens!" cried Lucas. "Read that."

Hillary read--

"Come immediately. Unfortunate complication here. Require you to
explain fully.--HERIOT WALKINGSHAW."

He looked considerably sobered.

"Of course I didn't really mean what I was saying--"

Lucas interrupted him brusquely.

"I'm off. Look after things here. What the devil--"

He strode down the lane, hailed a cab, and drove off to an
accompaniment of the most anxious speculations.

"This way, sir," said the attendant at the Hotel Gigantique.

Lucas followed him, still racking his brains for some explanation not
too disastrous to his hopes. The man opened the door of a sitting-room
and closed it quietly behind him. In the room there was only one person,
a girl with the sunniest hair and the straightest little nose and the
most delightfully astonished face imaginable.

"Jean!" he cried.

He took a quick step towards her and then remembered the gravity of the
summons.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

"Then it was you!" she exclaimed.

"Me?"

"Father only told me that some one--a man--"

He held out the telegram abruptly.

"What do you make of that?"

She read it, and then read it again, and her bewilderment seemed to
change into another emotion.

"What did your father tell you to do?" asked Lucas.

She gave him the queerest look.

"Get rid of the man if I could," she said.

He ran his fingers through his