Mr. Ascough rose, but Brooks detained him.

"You have plenty of time for your train," he said. "Will you forgive me if I go over a little old ground with you--for the last time?"

The lawyer resumed his seat.

"I am in no hurry," he said, "if you think it worth while."

"My father came to you when he was living at Stepney--a stranger to you."

"A complete stranger," Mr. Ascough agreed. "I had never seen him before in my life. I did a little trifling business for him in connection with his property."

"He told you nothing of his family or relatives?"

"He told me that he had not a relation in the world."

"You knew him slightly, then?" Brooks continued, "all the time he was in London? And when he left for that voyage he came to you."

"Yes."

"He made over his small income then to my mother in trust for me. Did it strike you as strange that he should do this instead of making a will?"

"Not particularly," Mr. Ascough declared. "As you know, it is not an unusual course."

"It did not suggest to you any determination on his part never to return to England?"

"Certainly not."

"He left England on friendly terms with my mother?"

"Certainly. She and he were people for whom I and every one who knew anything of their lives had the highest esteem and admiration."

"You can imagine no reason, then, for my father leaving England for good?"

"Certainly not!"

"You know of no reason why he should have abandoned his trip to Australia and gone to Canada?"

"None!"

"His doing so is as inexplicable to you as to me?"

"Entirely."

"You have never doubted Lord Arranmore's story of his death?"

"Never. Why should I?"

"One more question," Brooks said. "Do you know that lately I have met a traveller--a man who visited Lord Arranmore in Canada, and who declared to his certain knowledge there was no other human dwelling-house within fifty miles of Lord Arranmore's cabin?"

"He was obviously mistaken."

You think so?

"It is certain."

Brooks hesitated.

"My question," he said, "will have given you some idea of the uncertainty I have felt once or twice lately, owing to the report of the traveller Lacroix, and Lord Arranmore's unaccountable kindness to me.

You see, he isn't an ordinary man. He is not a philanthropist by any means, nor in any way a person likely to do kindly actions from the love of them. Now, do you know of any facts, or can you suggest anything which might make the situation clearer to me?"

"I cannot, Mr. Brooks," the older man answered, without hesitation.

"If you take my advice, you will not trouble yourself any more with fancies which seem to me--pardon me--quite chimerical. Accept Lord Arranmore's kindness as the offshoot of some sentimental feeling which he might well have entertained towards a fellow-countryman by whose death-bed he had stood in that far-away, lonely country. You may even yourself be mistaken in Lord Arranmore's character, and you can remember, too, that after all what means so much to you costs him nothing--is probably for his own advantage."

Brooks rose and took up his hat.

"I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Ascough," he said. "Yours, after all, is the common-sense view of the affair. If you like I will walk up to the station. I am going that way. . . ."

So Brooks, convinced of their folly, finally discarded certain uncomfortable thoughts which once or twice lately had troubled him. He dined at Enton that night, and improved his acquaintance with Lady Caroom and her daughter, who were still staying there. Although this was not a matter which he had mentioned to Mr. Ascough, there was something which he found more inexplicable even than Lord Arranmore's transference of the care of his estates to him, and that was the apparent encouragement which both he and Lady Caroom gave to the friendship between Sybil and himself. They had lunched with him twice in Medchester, and more often still the Enton barouche had been kept waiting at his office whilst Lady Caroom and Sybil descended upon him with invitations from Lord Arranmore. After his talk with Mr. Ascough he put the matter behind him, but it remained at times an inexplicable puzzle.

On the evening of this particular visit he found Sybil alone in a recess of the drawing-room with a newspaper in her hand. She greeted him with obvious pleasure.

"Do come and tell me about things, Mr. Brooks," she begged. "I have been reading the local paper. Is it true that there are actually people starving in Medchester?"

"There is a great deal of distress," he admitted, gravely. "I am afraid that it is true."

She looked at him with wide-open eyes.

"But I don't understand," she said. "I thought that there were societies who dealt with all that sort of thing, and behind, the--the workhouse."

"So there are, Lady Sybil," he answered, "but you must remember that societies are no use unless people will subscribe to them, and that there are a great many people who would sooner starve than enter the workhouse."

"But surely," she exclaimed, "there is no difficulty about getting money--if people only understand."

He watched her for a moment in silence--suddenly appreciating the refinement, the costly elegance which seemed in itself to be a part of the girl, and yet for which surely her toilette was in some way also responsible. Her white satin dress was cut and fashioned in a style which he was beginning to appreciate as evidence of skill and costliness. A string of pearls around her throat gleamed softly in the firelight. A chain of fine gold studded with opals and diamonds reached almost to her knees. She wore few rings indeed, but they were such rings as he had never seen before he had come as a guest to Enton. And there were thousands like her. A momentary flash of thought carried him back to the days of the French Revolution. There was a print hanging in his room of a girl as fair and as proud as this one, surrounded by a fierce rabble mad with hunger and the pent-up rage of generations, tearing the jewels from her fingers, tearing even, he thought, the trimming from her gown.

"You do not answer me, Mr. Brooks," she reminded him.

He recovered himself with a start.

"I beg your pardon, Lady Sybil. Your question set me thinking. We have tried to make people understand, and many have given most generously, but for all that we cannot cope with such distress as there is to-day in Medchester. I am secretary for one of the distribution societies, and I have seen things which are enough to sadden a man for life, only during the last few days."

"You have seen people--really hungry?" she asked, with something like timidity in her face.

He laughed bitterly.

"That we see every moment of the time we spend down amongst them," he answered. "I have seen worse things. I have seen the sapping away of character--men become thieves and women worse--to escape from starvation. That, I think, is the greatest tragedy of all. It makes one shudder when one thinks that on the shoulders of many people some portion of the responsibility at any rate for these things must rest."

Her lips quivered. She emptied the contents of a gold chain purse into her hands.