shadow fell between him and the sun, and dropped
the yellow book with a slight start. For a moment neither of them spoke;
they looked at each other in silence, the pale, shabby, dusty youth with
his vivid eyes; the frail, foppish, middle-aged, worn-out man, with his
pale face twitching a little and his near-sighted eyes screwed up, as if
he was startled, or dazzled, or trying hard to see something.

The next moment Lord Evelyn put out a slim, fine hand.

"How are you, Peter Margerison? Sit down and talk to me."

Peter sat down in the chair beside him.

Lord Evelyn said, "I'm quite alone this morning. Denis and Lucy have
motored to Genoa. I join them there this afternoon.... You didn't know
last night that I saw you."

"No," said Peter. "I believed that none of you had seen me. I didn't want
you to; so I came away."

Lord Evelyn nodded. "Quite so; quite so. I understood that. And I didn't
mention you to the others. Indeed, I didn't mean to take any notice of
you at all; but at the end I changed my mind, and sent for you to come.
I believe I'm right in thinking that your wish is to keep out of the way
of our family."

"Yes," said Peter.

"You're right. You've been very right indeed. There's nothing else you
could have done, all this time." Peter glanced at him quickly, to see
what he knew, and saw.

Lord Evelyn saw the questioning glance.

"Oh, yes, yes, boy. Of course, I knew about you and Lucy. I'm not such
a blind fool as I've sometimes been thought in the past--eh, Peter
Margerison? I always knew you cared for Lucy; and I knew she cared for
you. And I knew when she and you all but went off together. I asked Lucy;
I can read the child's eyes better than books, you see. I read it, and I
asked her, and she admitted it."

"It was you who stopped her," said Peter quietly.

Lord Evelyn tapped his fingers on his chair arm.

"I'm not a moralist; anything but a moralist, y'know. But as a man of the
world, with some experience, I knew that couldn't be. So I told her the
truth."

"The truth?" Peter wondered.

"Yes, boy, the truth. The only truth that mattered to Lucy. That you
couldn't be happy that way. That you loved Denis too much to be happy
that way. When I said it, she knew it. 'Deed, I believe she'd known it
before, in her heart. So she wrote to you, and ended that foolish idea.
You know now that she was right, I think?"

"I knew it then. I was just going to telegraph to her not to come when
I got he