him. We understand he lives in Tahiti. My
advice to you is to give him a wide berth, but if you do hear anything
about him Mrs Longstaffe and I would be very glad if you'd let us know."

"Sure."

"That was all I wanted to say to you. Now I daresay you'd like to join
the ladies."

There are few families that have not among their members one whom, if
their neighbours permitted, they would willingly forget, and they are
fortunate when the lapse of a generation or two has invested his
vagaries with a romantic glamour. But when he is actually alive, if his
peculiarities are not of the kind that can be condoned by the phrase,
"he is nobody's enemy but his own," a safe one when the culprit has no
worse to answer for than alcoholism or wandering affections, the only
possible course is silence. And it was this which the Longstaffes had
adopted towards Arnold Jackson. They never talked of him. They would not
even pass through the street in which he had lived. Too kind to make his
wife and children suffer for his misdeeds, they had supported them for
years, but on the understanding that they should live in Europe. They
did everything they could to blot out all recollection of Arnold Jackson
and yet were conscious that the story was as fresh in the public mind as
when first the scandal burst upon a gaping world. Arnold Jackson was as
black a sheep as any family could suffer from. A wealthy banker,
prominent in his church, a philanthropist, a man respected by all, not
only for his connections (in his veins ran the blue blood of Chicago),
but also for his upright character, he was arrested one day on a charge
of fraud; and the dishonesty which the trial brought to light was not of
the sort which could be explained by a sudden temptation; it was
deliberate and systematic. Arnold Jackson was a rogue. When he was sent
to the penitentiary for seven years there were few who did not think he
had escaped lightly.

When at the end of this last evening the lovers separated it was with
many protestations of devotion. Isabel, all tears, was consoled a little
by her certainty of Edward's passionate love. It was a strange feeling
that she had. It made her wretched to part from him and yet she was
happy because he adored her.

This was more than two years ago.

He had written to her by every mail since then, twenty-four letters in
all, for the mail went but once a month, and his letters had been all
that a lover's letters should be. They w