e reason.

Holloway brought the post-bag to the library, and waited while Mr.
Manley sorted the letters, that he might take those addressed to Lady
Loudwater to her rooms and those addressed to the servants to the
housekeeper's room.

As Mr. Manley inverted the bag and poured its contents on to the table,
the footman said: "'Utchings 'as gone, sir."

"We must bear up," said Mr. Manley, in a tone wholly void of any sympathy
with Hutchings in his misfortune.

"He was that furious. The things 'e said 'e'd do to his lordship!" said
Holloway in a deeply-impressed tone.

"Threatened men live long," said Mr. Manley carelessly.

CHAPTER III

There is in the collection of the Earl of Ellesmere a picture of the head
of a girl which the connoisseurs of the nineteenth century ascribed to
Leonardo da Vinci. The connoisseurs of the twentieth century ascribe it
to Luini. But for the colour of the hair it might have been a portrait of
Lady Loudwater, a faded portrait. It might also very well be a portrait
of one of her actual ancestresses, for her grandmother was a lady of an
old Tuscan family.

Be that as it may, Lady Loudwater had the soft, dark, dreamy eyes, set
rather wide apart, the straight, delicate nose, the alluring lips,
promising all the kisses, the broad, well-moulded forehead, and the
faint, exactly curving eyebrows of the girl in the picture. Above all,
when Lord Loudwater was not present, the mysterious, enchanting,
lingering smile, which is perhaps the chief charm of Luini's women,
rested nearly always on her face. But while the hair of the girl in the
picture is a deep, dull red, the hair of Olivia was dark brown with
glimmers of gold in it. Also, her colouring was warmer than that of the
girl in the picture, and her alluring charm stronger.

At a quarter to three that afternoon she came out on to the East lawn in
a silk frock and hat of a green rather sombre for the summer day. She had
been bidden by a fashionable fortune-teller never to wear green, for it
was her unlucky colour. But that tint had so given her colouring its full
values and her dark, liquid eyes so deep a depth, that she had paid no
heed to the warning. There was a bright light of expectation in her eyes,
and the alluring smile lingered on her face.

She walked quickly across the lawn with the easy, graceful gait proper to
the accomplished golfer she was, into the shrubbery on the other side of
it. A few feet along the path through