uld be privy
to the correspondence between his sister and Henshaw was quite unlikely.
If anything underhand was going on, if Henshaw was holding some threat
over the girl or pursuing her with unwelcome attentions her brother, as
her natural guardian, should be warned. That seemed to Gifford his
manifest duty. And yet he shrank from anything which might seem treachery
towards the girl. For, if she needed her brother's help and protection
against the man, it would be an easy matter for her to complain of his
persecution. Why, he wondered, had she not done so? It was all very
mysterious. He tried to imagine how the position had come about. On
Henshaw's side it was plain enough. Miss Morriston was not only a
strikingly handsome girl, but she was an heiress, possessing, according
to Kelson, a considerable fortune in her own right. There, clearly, was
Henshaw's motive; an incentive to an unscrupulous man to use every art,
fair and unfair, to force himself into her favour. But how had he
succeeded so quickly as to make this rather haughty, reserved girl
consent to meet in secret the man whom she professed to dislike and
avoid? That this unpleasantly sharp, pushing product of the less
dignified side of the law could have any personal attraction for one of
Edith Morriston's taste and discrimination was impossible. And yet there
the challenging fact remained that confidential relations had been
established between the disparate pair. Was it possible that this man
could have found out something connecting Edith Morriston with his
brother's death? The feasibility of the idea came as a shock to Gifford.
He stopped dead in his walk as the notion took form in his brain. The
possibilities of this most mysterious case were too complicated to be
grasped at once. And so with his mind in a whirl of vague conjecture and
apprehension he reached his hotel. And there a new development in the
mystery awaited him.

CHAPTER XV

ANOTHER DISCOVERY

Kelson was in their sitting-room reading the _Field_. He started up as
Gifford entered, and flung away the paper. "My dear Hugh, I've been
waiting for you," he exclaimed.

"What's the matter? Anything wrong?" Gifford asked with a certain
apprehensive curiosity, as he noticed signs of suppressed excitement in
his friend's face.

"I don't know whether it's all wrong or whether it is all right," Kelson
replied. "Anyhow it has relieved my mind a good deal."

Controlling his own tendency to ex