d the letters open in her hand and stared at them, but she did not
read. The sentences were burnt into her brain already.

Hugo Tancred's letter was dated. Fay's was not, and neither letter bore
any address in Bombay. Now, Jan knew that Bombay is a large town; and
that people like the Tancreds, who, if not actually in hiding, certainly
did not seek to draw attention to their movements, would be hard to
find. Fay had wholly omitted to mention the surname of the tall, thin,
yellow man with the "grave, stern face and beautiful kind eyes." Even in
the midst of her poignant anxiety Jan found herself smiling at this. It
was so like Fay--so like her to give no address. And should the tall,
thin gentleman fail to appear, what was Jan to do? She could hardly go
about the ship asking if one "Peter" had come to fetch her.

How would she find Fay?

Would they allow her to wait at the landing-place till someone came, or
were there stringent regulations compelling passengers to leave the
docks with the utmost speed, as most of them would assuredly desire to
do?

She knitted her brows and worried a good deal about this; then suddenly
put the question from her as too trivial when there were such infinitely
greater problems to solve.

Only one thing was clear. One central fact shone out, a beacon amidst
the gloom of the "departmental complications" enshrouding the conduct of
Hugo Tancred, the certainty that he had, for the present anyway, shifted
the responsibility of his family from his own shoulders to hers. As she
sat square and upright under the porthole, with the cool air from an
inserted "wind-sail" ruffling her hair, she looked as though she braced
herself to the burden.

She wished she knew exactly what had happened, what Hugo Tancred had
actually done. For some years she had known that he was by no means
scrupulous in money matters, and that very evening Sir Langham had made
it clear to her that this crookedness had not stopped short at his
official work. There had been a scandal, so far-reaching a scandal that
it had got into the home papers.

This struck Jan as rather extraordinary, for Hugo Tancred was by no
means a stupid man.

It is one thing to be pleasantly oblivious of private debts, to omit
cheques in repayment of various necessaries got at the Stores by an
obliging sister-in-law. One thing to muddle away in wild-cat
speculations a wife's money that, but for the procrastination of an
easy-going father, would