on I rose to leave.

"Oh! don't go yet!" my host urged quickly, as he glanced at the card.

"Is he waiting?" asked Mr. De Gex, turning to his servant.

"Yes, sir."

"Oh, well. Yes, I'll see him," he said. And then, excusing himself, he
rose and left, followed by the man.

Why, I wondered, had I been invited there? It seemed curious that
this exceedingly rich man was bursting to confide his domestic
troubles to a perfect stranger.

I glanced around the handsome, well-furnished room.

Upon the writing-table lay a number of letters, and upon the red
blotting-pad was a big wad of Treasury notes, under an elastic band,
cast aside heedlessly, as rich men often do.

As I sat there awaiting my host's return, I recollected how, in the
previous year, I had seen in the pictorial press photographs of the
handsome Mrs. De Gex attired in jersey and breeches, with knitted cap
and big woollen scarf, lying upon her stomach on a sleigh on the
Cresta run. In another photograph which I recollected she was watching
some ski-ing, and still another, when she was walking in the park with
a well-known Cabinet Minister and his wife. But her husband never
appeared in print. One of his well-known idiosyncrasies was that he
would never allow himself to be photographed.

At the end of the room I noticed, for the first time, a pair of heavy
oaken folding-doors communicating with the adjoining apartment, and as
I sat there I fancied I heard a woman's shrill but refined voice--the
voice of a well-bred young woman, followed by a peal of light, almost
hysterical, laughter, in which a man joined.

My adventure was certainly a strange one. I had started out to visit
my prosaic old uncle--as I so often did--and I had anticipated a very
boring time. But here I was, by a most curious circumstance, upon
friendly terms with one of the richest men in England.

Further, he seemed to have taken an unusual fancy to me. Probably
because I had been sympathetic regarding the rescue of little Oswald
De Gex. But why he should have confided all this to me I failed to
realize.

As I sat there by the cheerful fire I heard the voices again raised
in the adjoining room--the voices of a man and a woman.

Suddenly a sweet perfume greeted my nostrils. At first it seemed like
that of an old-fashioned _pot-pourri_ of lavender, verbena and basalt,
such as our grandmothers decocted in their punch-bowls from dried
rose-leaves to give their rooms a sweet odour. The sc