That meant me. I moved toward the gate.

"Not at all. Have a seat. Miss Omar, sit down, won't you?" I sat down.

"Miss Omar reads to me, Mr. Moriway. I'm an invalid, as you see,
dependent on the good offices of my man. I find a woman's voice a
soothing change."

"It must be. Particularly if the voice is pleasing. Miss Omar--I
didn't quite catch the name--"

He waited. But Miss Omar had nothing to say that minute.

"Yes, that's the name. You've got it all right," said Latimer. "An
uncommon name, isn't it?"

"I don't think I ever heard it before. Do you know, Miss Omar, as I
heard your voice just before we got to the gate, it sounded singularly
boyish to me."

"Mr. Latimer does not find it so--do you?" I said as sweet--as sweet as
I could coax. How sweet's that, Tom Dorgan?

"Not at all." A little laugh came from Latimer as though he was
enjoying a joke all by himself. But Moriway jumped with satisfaction.
He knew the voice all right.

"Have you a brother, may I ask?" He leaned over and looked keenly at
me.

"I am an orphan," I said sadly, "with no relatives."

"A pitiful position," sneered Moriway. "You look so much like a boy I
know that--"

"Do you really think so?" So awfully polite was Latimer to such a rat
as Moriway. Why? Well, wait. "I can't agree with you. Do you know,
I find Miss Omar very feminine. Of course, short hair--"

"Her hair is short, then!"

"Typhoid," I murmured.

"Too bad!" Moriway sneered.

"Yes," I snapped. "I thought it was at the time. My hair was very
heavy and long, and I had a chance to sit in a window at Troyon's where
they were advertising a hair tonic and--"

Rotten? Of course it was. I'd no business to gabble, and just because
you and your new job, Mag, came to my mind at that minute, there I went
putting my foot in it.

Moriway laughed. I didn't like the sound of his laugh.

"Your reader is versatile, Mr. Latimer," he said.

"Yes." Latimer smoothed the soft silk rug that lay over him. "Poverty
and that sort of versatility are often bedfellows, eh?... Tell me, Mr.
Moriway, these lost diamonds are yours?"

"No. They belong to a--a friend of mine, Mrs. Kingdon."

"Oh! the old lady who was married this afternoon to a young
fortune-hunter!" I couldn't resist it.

Moriway jumped out of his seat.

"She was not married," he stuttered. "She--"

"Changed her mind? How sensible of her! Did she find out what a crook
the fellow was