communication. 'In
the first place,' he said, 'it may still be proved to have been an
hallucination of her mind, attendant upon her state of health; and, in
the second place, anything like publicity might bring a host of
aspirants and adventurers whose claims would take months of
investigation to dispose of.' He advised that everything about the
house should remain in its present state for a year, until a proper
legal inquiry into the disappearance of the elder son could be
instituted.

'He may have died as a child, although he wasn't buried at Juarez,'
said Peter.

Jane had departed to spend her usual six months of the year with
General Erskine, but she had written to say, positively, that she knew
it would come all right; and whenever Peter was downhearted he always
thought of her letter, believing, in all simplicity, that Jane was
never wrong. If only she were at Miss Abingdon's now, instead of in
her uncle's house in Grosvenor Place!

'She 'll miss the hunting, I 'm afraid,' he thought miserably,
contrasting their present separation with all the joy and happiness
that they had so fully intended should be theirs this winter.

Mr. Semple had a shrewdness acquired from many years' experience in
legal matters, and he shook his head when Peter made the suggestion
that probably his brother had died in infancy. 'The conclusion I have
arrived at, after years of legal work,' he said, 'is that the
undesirable person lives, while the useful or much wanted one dies.
Those who encumber the ground remain longest upon it, and the person in
receipt of a large annuity or pension is proverbially long-lived.
However, we have so far not found a single trace of the existence of
Edward Ogilvie, though you must remember we have not yet ascertained in
which different parts of Spain your mother lived during those two years
which she spent there.'

'I don't see who on earth is to tell us!' ejaculated Peter. 'She
generally had foreign maids about her, and I think I always had French
nurses. I never heard of any old servant who went with her on her
travels; and although, of course, money was paid to her by her bank,
and letters were forwarded to her by the bankers, the actual addresses
to which they were sent have not been kept after an interval of
twenty-five years. One of the old clerks at Coutts's remembers, in an
indefinite sort of way, that he forwarded packages for a long time to
Madrid, and afterwards, he thinks, to Toled