mouth in response. It was as
if they had both said, in awe--

"She has spoken!"

And Rachel, still further flattered and happy, was obliged to smile.

When Mrs. Tams had made her last tiptoe journey from the room and
closed the door with due silent respect upon those great ones, the
expression of Thomas Batchgrew's face changed somewhat; he looked
round, as though for spies, and then drew a packet of papers from his
pocket. And the expression of the other two faces changed also. For
the true purpose of the executor's visit was now to be made formally
manifest.

"Now about this statement of account--_re_ Elizabeth Maldon,
deceased," he growled deeply.

"By the way," Louis interrupted him. "Is Julian back?"

"Julian back? Not as I know of," said Mr. Batchgrew aggressively.
"Why?"

"We thought we saw him walking down Moorthorne Road to-night."

"Yes," said Rachel. "We both thought we saw him."

"Happen he is if he aeroplaned it!" said Batchgrew, and fumbled
nervously with the papers.

"It couldn't have been Julian," said Louis, confidently, to Rachel.

"No, it couldn't," said Rachel.

But neither conjured away the secret uneasiness of the other. And
as for Rachel, she knew that all through the evening she had,
inexplicably, been disturbed by an apprehension that Julian, after
his long and strange sojourn in South Africa, had returned to the
district. Why the possible advent of Julian should disconcert her, she
thought she could not divine. Mr. Batchgrew's demeanour as he answered
Louis' question mysteriously increased her apprehension. At one moment
she said to herself, "Of course it wasn't Julian." At the next, "I'm
quite sure I couldn't be mistaken." At the next, "And supposing it was
Julian--what of it?"

II

When Batchgrew and Louis, sitting side by side on the Chesterfield,
began to turn over documents and peer into columns, and carry the
finger horizontally across sheets of paper in search of figures,
Rachel tactfully withdrew, not from the room, but from the
conversation, it being her proper role to pretend that she did not
and could not understand the complicated details which they were
discussing. She expected some rather dazzling revelation of men's
trained methods at this "business interview" (as Louis had announced
it), for her brother and father had never allowed her the slightest
knowledge of their daily affairs. But she was disappointed. She
thought that both the men were somewhat ab