de signs. 'Take this ring off of my
finger and keep it,' says he. 'I've got nothing else to give you, but I
reckon the Almighty'll foot your bill, for you're a first-class Christian,
if ever there was one.' Then he went in, and Bough buried him in regular
fancy style----"

"And sent the girl to the nuns at Gueldersdorp, or was she there already?"

Van Busch was in the act of taking back the sardonyx signet-ring. His hand
jerked again, so sharply that the ring was jerked into the air, fell to
the floor, and rolled under the table. He stooped and reached for it, and
asked, with his face hidden by the patriotic tablecloth:

"What girl do you mean?"

His dark face was purple-brown with the exertion of stooping as he rose
up. Lady Hannah answered:

"The Mother-Superior of the Convent of the Holy Way at Gueldersdorp has an
orphan ward, a singularly lovely girl of nineteen or twenty, whose surname
is Mildare. And it struck me just now--I don't know why now, and never
before--that she might be----"

"Bough never said nothing to me about any girl. What like is this one?"
Van Busch twisted the ring about his little finger, and spoke with a more
sluggish lisp and slurring of the consonants than even was usual with him.
"Is she short and square, with black hair and round blue eyes, and red
cheeks and thick ankles?"

Lady Hannah, despite all her recently-gained experience of Van Busch, had
not yet mastered his method of eliciting information.

"Miss Mildare is absolutely the opposite of your description," she
declared. "She is quite tall, and very slight and pale, with slender hands
and feet, and reddish-bronze hair, and eyes the colour of yellow topaz or
old honey, with wonderful black lashes.... I have never seen anything to
compare----" She stopped.

What strange eyes the man had, full of lines radiating from the pin-point
pupils, scintillating like a snake's.... He said, in his thick, lisping
way:

"A beauty, eh? And how long might the nuns have had her?"

"The Mayor's wife told me she has been under the care of the Convent
ladies for some seven years."

His brown full face looked solid, and his eyes veiled themselves behind a
glassy film. He was thinking, as he said:

"And her name is Mildare, eh? And you know her?"

"I have met her once. She was introduced to me as Miss Lynette Mildare.
But just now I find my own affairs unpleasantly absorbing. I am suspected
in this place, Mr. Van Busch, and if not actually a