esides, they've moved. And I
found it myself ever so long ago."

She laughed.

"Oh, Frank!"

Woodville put his hand out and took hers.

"Oh, don't go just yet!" he said imploringly.

"Why, you told me to go away just now--or to the other side of the
room!"

"Ah, but that was ages ago! Why, you haven't _been_ here two minutes!
You can't be in such a hurry.... Anyhow, come here a second."

She obeyed, and leant over his shoulder.... Then he said abruptly--

"Yes, you had better go."

Blushing, she glided away at once, without another word.

Woodville remained at the desk, looking a little pale, and frowning. He
had a theory that he was a very scrupulous man, with a high sense of
honour. It was a worrying theory.

With a sigh he returned to the invitation cards.

CHAPTER IV

"AUNT WILLIAM"

Mrs. William Crofton, the widow of Sir James's brother, was, in her own
way, quite a personage in London; at least, in the London that she knew.
We have already seen her in the photograph in Savile's possession taken
some forty years ago (by Mayall and Son, at Brighton). She was now an
elderly lady, and still occupied the large ugly house in South Audley
Street, where the children remembered their Uncle Mary. Felicity,
Sylvia, and Savile had chosen to reverse the order in which they were
told to speak of their uncle and aunt. Felicity had pointed out that not
only was Aunt William more like an uncle, but that by this ingenious
device they dodged a kind of history lesson. The great object always was
to counteract carefully any information conveyed to them during the time
of their education. All historians and teachers alike were regarded as
natural enemies from Pinnock to Plato. On the same principle, Savile
would never eat _Reading_ biscuits, because he feared that some form of
condensed study was being insidiously introduced into the system. Boys
had to be on their guard against any treachery of that kind.

If there were a certain charm in the exterior of this old house--solid
and aggressively respectable--its interior gave most visitors at first a
nervous shock. Aunt William still firmly believed aestheticism to be
fashionable, and a fad that should be discouraged. Through every varying
whim of the mode she had stuck, with a praiseworthy persistence, to the
wax flowers under glass, Indian chessmen, circular tables in the centre
of the room, surrounded by large books, and the rep curtains (crimson,
with gree