open to the next adventurer; for he left behind him no son of his own
mettle.

Turner went back to his office, where the pen with which he had signed a
cheque for four hundred pounds, payable to the Reverend Septimus Marvin,
was still wet; where, at the bottom of the largest safe, the portrait of
an unknown lady of the period of Louis XVI. lay concealed. He wrote out
a telegram to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, addressed to her at her villa
near Royan, and then proceeded to his dinner with the grave face of the
careful critic.

The next morning he received the answer, at his breakfast-table, in the
apartment he had long occupied in the Avenue d'Antin. But he did not
open the envelope. He had telegraphed to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence,
asking if it would be convenient for her to put him up for a few days.
And he suspected that it would not.

"When I am gone," he said to his well-trained servant, "put that into
an envelope and send it after me to the Villa Cordouan, Royan. Pack my
portmanteau for a week."

Thus John Turner set out southward to join a party of those Royalists
whom his father before him had learnt to despise. And in a manner he
was pre-armed; for he knew that he would not be welcome. It was in those
days a long journey, for the railway was laid no farther than Tours,
from whence the traveller must needs post to La Rochelle, and there take
a boat to Royan--that shallow harbour at the mouth of the Gironde.

"Must have a change--of cooking," he explained to Mrs. St. Pierre
Lawrence. "Doctor says I am getting too stout."

He shook her deliberately by the hand without appearing to notice her
blank looks.

"So I came south and shall finish up at Biarritz, which they say is
going to be fashionable. I hope it is not inconvenient for you to give
me a bed--a solid one--for a night or two."

"Oh no!" answered Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, who had charming manners,
and was one of those fortunate persons who are never at a loss. "Did you
not receive my telegram?"

"Telling me you were counting the hours till my arrival?"

"Well," admitted Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, wisely reflecting that he
would ultimately see the telegram, "hardly so fervent as that--"

"Good Lord!" interrupted Turner, looking behind her toward the veranda,
which was cool and shady, where two men were seated near a table bearing
coffee-cups. "Who is that?"

"Which?" asked Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, without turning to follow the
direction of his glanc