brooch to Wargrove himself, and to ask
his mother about it. Then he could learn why she wanted it back--if not
from her, then from his father. This knowledge might explain the
mystery.

"Did you sell the brooch?" asked Grexon as they walked up Gwynne Street.

"No. I have to send it back to my mother, and--"

"Hold on!" cried Hay, stumbling. "Orange-peel--ah--"

His stumble knocked Paul into the middle of the road. A motor car was
coming down swiftly. Before Hay could realize what had taken place Paul
was under the wheels of the machine.

CHAPTER V

TROUBLE

"Oh, Debby," wept Sylvia, "he will die--he will die."

"Not he, my precious pet," said the handmaiden, fondling the girl's soft
hands within her own hard ones. "Them sort of young men have as many
lives as tom cats. Bless you, my flower, he'll be up and ready, waiting
at the altar, before the fashions change--and that's quick enough,"
added Deborah, rubbing her snub nose. "For they're allays an-altering
and a-turning and a-changing of 'em."

The two were in the sitting-room over the bookshop. It was a
low-ceilinged apartment, long and narrow, with windows back and front,
as it extended the whole depth of the house. The back windows looked out
on the dingy little yard, but these Norman had filled in with stained
glass of a dark color, so that no one could see clearly out of them. Why
he had done so was a mystery to Sylvia, though Deborah suspected the old
man did not want anyone to see the many people who came to the back
steps after seven. From the front windows could be seen the street and
the opposite houses, and on the sills of the windows Sylvia cultivated a
few cheap flowers, which were her delight. The room was furnished with
all manner of odds and ends, flotsam and jetsam of innumerable sales
attended by Aaron. There were Japanese screens, Empire sofas, mahogany
chairs, Persian praying mats, Louis Quatorz tables, Arabic tiles,
Worcester china, an antique piano that might have come out of the ark,
and many other things of epochs which had passed away. Sylvia herself
bloomed like a fair flower amidst this wreckage of former times.

But the flower drooped at this moment and seemed in danger of dying for
lack of sunshine. That, indeed, had been taken away by the removal of
the young lover. Bart, who had witnessed the accident, returned hastily
to tell Sylvia, and so great had the shock of the dreadful news been,
that she had fainted, whereupon