r command I have this morning, three hours
after your departure for Naples, allowed the prisoner to escape."

"How funny!" she exclaimed, knitting her brows. "I can't remember any
prisoner at the villa. Perhaps it was the cat. It would be just like
Silvio to consider the release of a cat a important event."

She replaced the letter in the book and after selecting another novel
forgot Silvio's epistle entirely.

Another time, when Alora happened to be at home for their noon-day
luncheon and her father did not appear, Jane Gladys quietly remarked in
answer to her query that "th' ol' man was prob'ly over to the
flyin'-machine works."

"Does he go there often?" she asked in surprise.

"Why, he mostly lives there," asserted the maid.

Alora laughed, and afterward told Mary Louise, as a bit of humorous
gossip, that the man who had heretofore failed to find any interest in
life had at last succumbed to the fascination of the aeroplane.

"Well, I'm glad of it," said Mary Louise. "I've often wondered, Lory,
how your father could be so infatuated with novel-reading, absorbing
stories of human interest, if they have any interest at all, with such
avidity, while the real people all around him failed to interest him at
all. I have thought perhaps he read to keep his mind from--from other
things that it would make him unhappy to dwell upon."

"I have thought so, too," replied Alora, musingly. "And this queer
fancy of his for a new and unusual invention may serve the same
purpose. But I, too, am glad he has found a diversion that will keep
him away from home. That barn of a cottage will become more homelike
without his eternal presence."

Peter Conant, the lawyer, had paid little heed to Jason Jones since the
latter's arrival in Dorfield. He had heard his wife and Irene gossip
about the girl and her father and state that Alora was an heiress and
Mr. Jones merely the guardian of her fortune until she came of age, but
his legal mind decided that the girl's "fortune" must be a modest one,
since they lived so economically and dressed so plainly. Colonel
Hathaway, who might have undeceived him in this regard, seldom spoke to
the lawyer of anything but his own affairs and had forborne to mention
Mr. Jones and his personal affairs in any way.

Therefore Mr. Conant was somewhat surprised when one morning Jason
Jones called at his office and asked for an interview. The lawyer was
busy that day, and attaching little importance to his