r than spoken to you like that. You know
he will. You're his first-born and his favourite--as you have always
been. Try and see this thing clearly. Don't act in a hurry, dear. Just
wait--wait until this evening, for my sake if not for your own. Don't
leave me here to stick the thing out by myself. It isn't fair to me."

That last plea seemed to strike home better than all the others had
done, for the anger faded suddenly from his countenance, and he laid a
hand against her cheek before swinging upon his heel.

"Well, I'll think about it, and see what Cynthia says, anyhow," he
replied, after a pause. "Only, I've reached the end of my tether, and
human nature won't stand too much. Sorry, Miss McCall. Did I tread upon
your foot? I'm so blithering angry I don't really know what I'm doing,
so you must forgive me."

And for the first time the company seemed aware that Johanna McCall had
been a silent spectator of this family scene. For she had kept, as
usual, as quiet as a mouse, only, Cleek observed as he looked at her,
her eyes had blazed with that one light which no fire can quench, and
she had shut them for a moment, as though to hide the secret they
revealed from Ross Duggan's troubled face.

"It's all right, really. And I'm so--awfully sorry, Mr. Duggan," she
said in her soft, monotonous voice. "It is so unfair, so unjust! And
please don't go--without saying good-bye--to me."

Then she, too, turned upon her heel and fled out of the room. And
suddenly Cleek saw one thing startlingly clear. Miss Duggan had
mentioned "an attraction" in Johanna McCall's eyes. That was why she
stayed on here at the Castle and endured so much. But she had given him
to understand that it was Tavish.

But it was _not_ Tavish who had inspired that unquenching fire in those
pale eyes; it was _not_ Tavish who had set that hero-worshipping
expression upon the plain, unattractive face.

It was the disinherited heir to the estates himself!

* * * * *

That afternoon, after he had left the Castle and its inhabitants behind,
he wired Mr. Narkom, as he had said he would. The enigmatic words which
flew across the wire to Scotland Yard, in their own particular code, and
made Mr. Narkom fairly jump in excitement, were these: "_Full up right
to the brim. Come along. Cleek._"

CHAPTER VII

THE SUMMONS

Cleek left that house of anger in a strange frame of mind, rather glad
to be back again in his own sunny