he was in charge, through committee. Yet the blinds of the house
in Hill Street were all drawn, and the Dean had not yet succeeded in
getting any one to answer the bell.

He returned to the attack, and this time a charwoman appeared. At sight
of the Dean's legs and apron, she dropped a courtesy, or something like
one, informing him that they had workmen in the house and Mr. Ashe was
"staying with her ladyship."

The Dean took the Tranmores' number in Park Lane and departed thither,
not without a sad glance at the desolate hall behind the charwoman and
at the darkened windows of the drawing-room overhead. He thought of that
May day two years before when he had dropped in to lunch with Lady
Kitty; his memory, equally effective whether it summoned the detail of
an English chronicle or the features of a face once seen, placed firm
and clear before him the long-chinned fellow at Lady Kitty's left, to
whose villany that empty and forsaken house bore cruel witness. And the
little lady herself--what a radiant and ethereal beauty! Ah me! ah me!

He walked on in meditation, his hands behind his back. Even in this May
London the little Dean was capable of an abstracted spirit, and he had
still much to think over. He had his appointment with Ashe. But Ashe had
written--evidently in a press of business--from the House, and had
omitted to mention his temporary change of address. The Dean regretted
it. He would rather have done his errand with Lady Kitty's injured
husband on some neutral ground, and not in Lady Tranmore's house.

At Park Lane, however, he was immediately admitted.

"Mr. Ashe will be down directly, sir," said the butler, as he ushered
the visitor into the commodious library on the ground-floor, which had
witnessed for so long the death-in-life of Lord Tranmore. But now Lord
Tranmore was bedridden up-stairs, with two nurses to look after him, and
to judge from the aspect of the tables piled with letters and books, and
from the armful of papers which a private secretary carried off with him
as he disappeared before the Dean, Ashe was now fully at home in the
room which had been his father's.

There was still a fire in the grate, and the small Dean, who was a
chilly mortal, stood on the rug looking nervously about him. Lord
Tranmore had been in office himself, and the room, with its bookshelves
filled with volumes in worn calf bindings, its solid writing-tables and
leather sofas, its candlesticks and inkstands of ol