Looking about with less haste, he was struck by a detail that had
escaped him. The room was full of flowers--a mere "bachelor's room," in
the wing of a house opened only for a few days, in the dead middle of
a New Hampshire winter! Flowers were everywhere, not in senseless
profusion, but placed with the same conscious art that he had remarked
in the grouping of the blossoming shrubs in the hall. A vase of arums
stood on the writing-table, a cluster of strange-hued carnations on
the stand at his elbow, and from bowls of glass and porcelain clumps of
freesia-bulbs diffused their melting fragrance. The fact implied acres
of glass--but that was the least interesting part of it. The flowers
themselves, their quality, selection and arrangement, attested on
some one's part--and on whose but John Lavington's?--a solicitous and
sensitive passion for that particular form of beauty. Well, it simply
made the man, as he had appeared to Faxon, all the harder to understand!

The half-hour elapsed, and Faxon, rejoicing at the prospect of food, set
out to make his way to the dining-room. He had not noticed the direction
he had followed in going to his room, and was puzzled, when he left it,
to find that two staircases, of apparently equal importance, invited
him. He chose the one to his right, and reached, at its foot, a long
gallery such as Rainer had described. The gallery was empty, the doors
down its length were closed; but Rainer had said: "The second to the
left," and Faxon, after pausing for some chance enlightenment which did
not come, laid his hand on the second knob to the left.

The room he entered was square, with dusky picture-hung walls. In its
centre, about a table lit by veiled lamps, he fancied Mr. Lavington and
his guests to be already seated at dinner; then he perceived that the
table was covered not with viands but with papers, and that he had
blundered into what seemed to be his host's study. As he paused Frank
Rainer looked up.

"Oh, here's Mr. Faxon. Why not ask him--?"

Mr. Lavington, from the end of the table, reflected his nephew's smile
in a glance of impartial benevolence.

"Certainly. Come in, Mr. Faxon. If you won't think it a liberty--"

Mr. Grisben, who sat opposite his host, turned his head toward the door.
"Of course Mr. Faxon's an American citizen?"

Frank Rainer laughed. "That's all right!... Oh, no, not one of your
pin-pointed pens, Uncle Jack! Haven't you got a quill somewhere?"

Mr. Bal