gligently.

Glennard was nettled by his obvious loss of interest. "I rather think
they'd attract a good deal of notice if they were published."

Flamel still looked uninterested. "Love-letters, I suppose?"

"Oh, just--the letters a woman would write to a man she knew well. They
were tremendous friends, he and she."

"And she wrote a clever letter?"

"Clever? It was Margaret Aubyn."

A great silence filled the room. It seemed to Glennard that the words
had burst from him as blood gushes from a wound.

"Great Scott!" said Flamel, sitting up. "A collection of Margaret
Aubyn's letters? Did you say YOU had them?"

"They were left me--by my friend."

"I see. Was he--well, no matter. You're to be congratulated, at any
rate. What are you going to do with them?"

Glennard stood up with a sense of weariness in all his bones. "Oh, I
don't know. I haven't thought much about it. I just happened to see that
some fellow was writing her life--"

"Joslin; yes. You didn't think of giving them to him?"

Glennard had lounged across the room and stood staring up at a bronze
Bacchus who drooped his garlanded head above the pediment of an Italian
cabinet. "What ought I to do? You're just the fellow to advise me." He
felt the blood in his cheek as he spoke.

Flamel sat with meditative eye. "What do you WANT to do with them?" he
asked.

"I want to publish them," said Glennard, swinging round with sudden
energy--"If I can--"

"If you can? They're yours, you say?"

"They're mine fast enough. There's no one to prevent--I mean there are
no restrictions--" he was arrested by the sense that these accumulated
proofs of impunity might precisely stand as the strongest check on his
action.

"And Mrs. Aubyn had no family, I believe?"

"No."

"Then I don't see who's to interfere," said Flamel, studying his
cigar-tip.

Glennard had turned his unseeing stare on an ecstatic Saint Catherine
framed in tarnished gilding.

"It's just this way," he began again, with an effort. "When letters are
as personal as--as these of my friend's.... Well, I don't mind telling
you that the cash would make a heap of difference to me; such a lot that
it rather obscures my judgment--the fact is if I could lay my hand on a
few thousands now I could get into a big thing, and without appreciable
risk; and I'd like to know whether you think I'd be justified--under the
circumstances...." He paused, with a dry throat. It seemed to him at the
moment that it