ence, deeply moved; his lips formed a name familiar to
Law Courts.

'Excuse my emotion, Mr. Logan,' he went on. 'I shall be happy to see and
arrange with this lady, who, I trust will, as my cousin, accept my
hospitality at Rookchester. I shall be deeply interested, as you, no
doubt, will also be, in the result of her researches into an affair which
so closely concerns both you and me.'

He was silent again, musing deeply, while Logan marvelled more and more
what his real original business might be. All this affair of the
documents and the muniment-room had arisen by the merest accident, and
would not have arisen if the Earl had found Merton at home. The Earl
obviously had a difficulty in coming to the point: many clients had. To
approach a total stranger on the most intimate domestic affairs (even if
his ancestor and yours were in a big thing together three hundred years
ago) is, to a sensitive patrician, no easy task. In fact, even members
of the middle class were, as clients, occasionally affected by shyness.

'Mr. Logan,' said the Earl, 'I am not a man of to-day. The cupidity of
our age, the eagerness with which wealthy aliens are welcomed into our
best houses and families, is to me, I may say, distasteful. Better that
our coronets were dimmed than that they should be gilded with the gold
eagles of Chicago or blazing with the diamonds of Kimberley. My feelings
on this point are unusually--I do not think that they are unduly--acute.'

Logan murmured assent.

'I am poor,' said the Earl, with all the expansiveness of the shy; 'but I
never held what is called a share in my life.'

'It is long,' said Logan, with perfect truth, 'since anything of that
sort was in my own possession. In that respect my 'scutcheon, so to
speak, is without a stain.'

'How fortunate I am to have fallen in with one of sentiments akin to my
own, unusual as they are!' said the Earl. 'I am a widower,' he went on,
'and have but one son and one daughter.'

'He is coming to business _now_,' thought Logan.

'The former, I fear, is as good almost as affianced--is certainly in
peril of betrothal--to a lady against whom I have not a word to say,
except that she is inordinately wealthy, the sole heiress of--' Here the
Earl gasped, and was visibly affected. 'You may have heard, sir,' the
patrician went on, 'of a commercial transaction of nature unfathomable to
myself--I have not sought for information,' he waved his hand
impatiently,