ute.

"Who was that?" asked Louisa, when the passer-by was out of ear shot.

"I don't know," replied Luke. "I thought it was some one you knew. He
bowed to you."

"No," she said, "to you, I think. Funny you should not know him."

But silence once broken, constraint fled with it. She drew nearer to
Luke and once more her hand sought his coat sleeve, with a light
pressure quickly withdrawn.

"Now, Luke," she said, abruptly reverting to the subject, "how do you
stand in all this?"

"I?"

"Yes. What does Lord Radclyffe say?"

"He laughs the whole thing to scorn, and declares that the man is an
impudent liar."

"He saw," she asked, "the first letter? The one that came from St.
Vincent?"

"Yes. Mr. Warren and I did not think we ought to keep it from him."

"Of course not," she assented. "Then he said that the letter was a
tissue of lies?"

"From beginning to end."

"He refused," she insisted, "to believe in the marriage of your uncle
Arthur out there in Martinique?"

"He didn't go into details. He just said that the whole letter was an
impudent attempt at blackmail."

"And since then?"

"He has never spoken about it."

"Until to-day?" she asked.

"He hasn't spoken," he replied, insisting on the word, "even to-day.
Two or three times I think letters came for him in the same
handwriting. Mr. Warren did not open them, of course, and took them
straight to Uncle Rad. They always bore foreign postmarks, some from
one place, some from another; but Uncle Rad never referred to them
after he had read them, nor did he instruct Mr. Warren to reply. Then
the letters ceased, and I began to forget the whole business. I didn't
tell you, because Uncle Rad told me not to talk about the whole thing.
It was beneath contempt, he said, and he didn't want the tittle-tattle
to get about."

"Then," she asked, "what happened?"

"A week ago a letter came with a London postmark on it. The address
and letter were both type-written, and the latter covered four sheets
of paper, and was signed Philip de Mountford. Bar the actual story of
the marriage and all that, the letter was almost identical to the
first one which came from St. Vincent. Mr. Warren had opened it, for
it looked like a business one, and he waited for me in his office to
ask my opinion about it. Of course we had to give it to Uncle Rad. It
had all the old phrases in it about blood being thicker than water,
and about longing for friendship and companionship, and