d then waited as though she
expected an explanation.

Harry smiled. "I'm afraid, Mrs. Feverel," he said, "that you may think
this extraordinary. I can only offer as apology your acquaintance with
my son."

"Ah yes--Mr. Robert Trojan."

Her mouth closed with a snap and she waited, with her hands folded on
her lap, for him to say something further.

"You knew him, I think, at Cambridge in the summer?"

"Yes, my daughter and I were there in the summer."

Harry paused. It would be harder than he expected, and where was the
daughter?

"Cambridge is very pleasant in the summer?" he asked, his resolution
weakening rapidly before her impassivity.

"My daughter and I found it so. But, of course, it depends----"

It depended, he reflected, on such people as his son--boys whom they
could cheat at their ease. He had no doubt at all now that the mother
was an adventuress of the common, melodrama type. He suspected the
girl of being the same. It made things in some ways much simpler,
because money would, probably, settle everything; there would be no
question of fine feelings. He knew exactly how to deal with such
women, he had known them in New Zealand; but he was amused as he
contemplated Clare's certain failure--such a woman was entirely outside
her experience.

He came to the point at once.

"My being here is easily explained. I learn, Mrs. Feverel, that my son
formed an attachment for your daughter during last summer. He wrote
some letters now in your daughter's possession. His family are
naturally anxious that those letters should be returned. I have come
to see what can be done about the matter." He paused--but she said
nothing, and remained motionless by the fire.

"Perhaps," he said slowly, "you would prefer, Mrs. Feverel, to name a
possible price yourself?"

Afterwards, on looking back, he felt that his expectations had been
perfectly justified; she had, up to that point, given him every reason
to take the line that he adopted. She had listened to the first part
of his speech without remark; she must, he reflected afterwards, have
known what was coming, yet she had given no sign that she heard.

And so the change in her was startling and took him utterly by surprise.

She looked up at him from her chair, and the thin ghost of a smile that
crept round the corners of her mouth, faced him for a moment, and then
vanished suddenly, was the strangest thing that he had ever seen.

"Don't you thin