take seriously,
yet who was none the less objectionable for all that.

I know not whether Ransom would have attempted to answer her question
had an obstacle not presented itself; at any rate, at the moment she
spoke, the curtain in the doorway was pushed aside, and a visitor
crossed the threshold. "Mercy! how provoking!" Mrs. Luna exclaimed,
audibly enough; and without moving from her place she bent an
uncharitable eye upon the invader, a gentleman whom Ransom had the sense
of having met before. He was a young man with a fresh face and abundant
locks, prematurely white; he stood smiling at Mrs. Luna, quite undaunted
by the absence of any demonstration in his favour. She looked as if she
didn't know him, while Ransom prepared to depart, leaving them to settle
it together.

"I'm afraid you don't remember me, though I have seen you before," said
the young man, very amiably. "I was here a week ago, and Miss Chancellor
presented me to you."

"Oh yes; she's not at home now," Mrs. Luna returned vaguely.

"So I was told--but I didn't let that prevent me." And the young man
included Basil Ransom in the smile with which he made himself more
welcome than Mrs. Luna appeared disposed to make him, and by which he
seemed to call attention to his superiority. "There is a matter on which
I want very much to obtain some information, and I have no doubt you
will be so good as to give it to me."

"It comes back to me--you have something to do with the newspapers,"
said Mrs. Luna; and Ransom too, by this time, had placed the young man
among his reminiscences. He had been at Miss Birdseye's famous party,
and Doctor Prance had there described him as a brilliant journalist.

It was quite with the air of such a personage that he accepted Mrs.
Luna's definition, and he continued to radiate towards Ransom (as if, in
return, he remembered _his_ face), while he dropped, confidentially, the
word that expressed everything--"The _Vesper_, don't you know?" Then he
went on: "Now, Mrs. Luna, I don't care, I'm not going to let you off! We
want the last news about Miss Verena, and it has got to come out of this
house."

"Oh murder!" Ransom muttered, beneath his breath, taking up his hat.

"Miss Chancellor has hidden her away; I have been scouring the city in
search of her, and her own father hasn't seen her for a week. We have
got his ideas; they are very easy to get, but that isn't what we want."

"And what do you want?" Ransom was now impelled