n came the tea-tray, placed by Jane
on a large table several paces from the fire. Very deliberately, and
asking no questions as to milk or sugar, for well he knew the tastes
of his father and of his father's friend, he poured out two cups of
tea, and, turning, advanced, a cup balanced in each steady hand.

But halfway across the room he stopped for a moment, arrested by the
sound of his father's voice:

"Theo, my boy, I want to ask you something." This mode of address had
become of late years a little unusual, and there was something in
Thomas Carden's accents which struck his son as significant, even as
rather solemn.

"Yes, father?"

"Did you not tell me this morning that you had never met Garvice?"

The one onlooker, hatchet-faced Major Lane, suddenly leaned a little
forward. He was astonished at his old friend's extraordinary and
uncalled-for courage, and it was with an effort, with the feeling that
he was bracing himself to see something terrible take place, that he
looked straight at the tall, fine-looking man who had now advanced
into the circle of light thrown by the tall Argand lamps.

But Theodore Carden appeared quite unmoved, nay, more, quite
unconcerned by his father's question.

"Yes," he said, "of course I told you so. I suppose I knew the old
fellow by sight, but I certainly was never introduced to him. Are
there any new developments?" He turned to Major Lane with a certain
curiosity, and then quite composedly handed him the cup of tea he held
in his right hand.

"Well, yes," answered the other coldly, "there are. We arrested Mrs.
Garvice this morning."

"That seems rather a strong step to have taken, unless new evidence
has turned up since Saturday," said Theodore thoughtfully.

"Such new evidence has come to hand since Saturday," observed Major
Lane significantly.

There was a pause, and again Thomas Carden addressed his son with that
strange touch of solemnity, and again Major Lane, with some inward
wincing, stared fixedly at the young man now standing, a stalwart,
debonair figure, between himself and his old friend.

"Can you assure me--can you assure us both--that you never met Mrs.
Garvice?"

Carden looked down at his father with a puzzled expression. "Of
course, I can't assure you of anything of the kind," he said, still
speaking quite placidly. "I may have met her somewhere or other, but I
can't remember having done so; and I think I should have remembered
it, both because the n