zzled inferiority in these recondite
matters of travel, and the comfort of having an omniscient male in the
house.

Then slightly drawing up his dark blue trousers with an accustomed
movement, he carefully sat down on the Chesterfield, and stroked
his soft black moustache (which was estimably long for a fellow of
twenty-three) and patted his black hair.

"Rachel, you didn't fasten that landing window, after all!" said Mrs.
Maldon, looking over Louis' head at the lady companion, who hesitated
modestly near the door. "I've tried, but I couldn't."

"Neither could I, Mrs. Maldon," said Rachel. "I was thinking perhaps
Mr. Fores wouldn't mind--"

She did not explain that her failure to fasten the window had been
more or less deliberate, since, while actually tugging at the window,
she had been visited by the sudden delicious thought: "How nice it
would be to ask Louis Fores to do this hard thing for me!"

And now she had asked him.

"Certainly!" Louis jumped to his feet, and off he went upstairs.
Most probably, if the sudden delicious thought had not skipped into
Rachel's brain, he would never have made that critical ascent to the
first floor.

A gas-jet burned low on the landing.

"Let's have a little light on the subject," he cheerfully muttered to
himself, as he turned on the gas to the full.

Then in the noisy blaze of yellow and blue light he went to the window
and with a single fierce wrench he succeeded in pulling the catch into
position. He was proud of his strength. It pleased him to think of the
weakness of women; it pleased him to anticipate the impressed thanks
of the weak women for this exertion of his power on their behalf.
"Have you managed it so soon?" his aunt would exclaim, and he would
answer in a carefully offhand way, "Of course. Why not?"

He was about to descend, but he remembered that he must not leave the
gas at full. With his hand on the tap, he glanced perfunctorily around
the little landing. The door of Mrs. Maldon's bedroom was in front of
him, at right angles to the window. By the door, which was ajar,
stood a cane-seated chair. Underneath the chair he perceived a whitish
package or roll that seemed to be out of place there on the floor. He
stooped and picked it up. And as the paper rustled peculiarly in his
hand, he could feel his heart give a swift bound. He opened the roll.
It consisted of nothing whatever but bank-notes. He listened intently,
with ear cocked and rigid limbs, and