we come to investigate that railway arch
and you will see. Now tell me something, Mr. Narkom: How came you to be
in the neighbourhood of Mulberry Lane at all to-night? It is nowhere
near Clavering Close; and it was decidedly out of your way if, as you
tell me, you were on the way back to town. It is peculiar that you
should have chosen to go out of your way like that."

"I didn't choose to do it. As a matter of fact I was executing a
commission for Lady Clavering. It appears that a jewel had been found by
the maid-in-attendance lying upon the floor of the ladies' room, and as
Lady Clavering recollected seeing that jewel upon Miss Ailsa Lorne's
person to-night, she asked me to stop at Wuthering Grange and return it
to her."

"Ailsa Lorne!" A light flashed into Cleek's face as he repeated the
name, and rising into his eyes, made them positively radiant. "Ailsa
Lorne, Mr. Narkom? You surely do not mean to tell me that Ailsa Lorne is
in Wimbledon?"

"Yes, certainly I do. My dear fellow, how the name seems to interest
you. But I remember: you know the lady, of course."

Know her? Know the woman whose eyes had lit the way back from those old
days of crime to the higher and the better things, the woman who had
been his redemption in this world, and would, perhaps, be his salvation
in the one to come? Cleek's very soul sang hymns of glory at the bare
thought of her.

"I did not know Miss Lorne would be in Wimbledon," he said quietly, "or
anywhere in the neighbourhood of London. I thought she had accepted a
temporary position down in Suffolk as the companion of an old school
friend, Lady Katharine Fordham."

"So she did," replied Narkom. "And it is as that unhappy young lady's
companion that she was at Clavering Close to-night. Lady Katharine, as
you doubtless know, is Lord St. Ulmer's only child."

"Lord St. Ulmer?" repeated Cleek, gathering up his brows thoughtfully.
"Hum-m-m! Ah-h-h! I seem to remember something about a Lord St. Ulmer.
Let me see! Lost his wife when his daughter was a mere baby, didn't he,
and took the loss so much to heart that he went out to Argentina and
left the girl to the care of an aunt? Yes, I recall it now. Story was in
all the papers some months ago. Got hold of a silver mine out there;
made a pot of money, and came home after something like fifteen years of
absence; bought in the old family place, Ulmer Court, down in Suffolk,
after it had been in the hands of strangers for a generation or