at supper instead of lobster
salad? Does not the lobster salad awaken memories? Surely you have not
forgotten that?"

Ruth began to smile.

"I remember now. So you were the kind man, name unknown, who took such
care of Anna and me? How good-natured you were!"

"Thanks! You evidently do remember now, if you say that. I recognized
you at once, when I saw you again, by your likeness to your brother
Raymond. You were very like him then, but much more so now. How is he?"

Ruth's dark gray eyes shot a sudden surprised glance at him. People had
seldom of late inquired after Raymond.

"I believe he is quite well," she replied, in a constrained tone. "I
have not heard from him for some time."

"It is some years since I met him," said Charles, noting but ignoring
her change of tone. "I used to see a good deal of him before he went
to--was it America? I heard from him about three years ago. He was
prospecting, I think, at that time."

Ruth remembered that Charles had succeeded his father about three years
ago. She remembered also Raymond's capacities for borrowing. A sudden
instinct told her what the drift of that letter had been. The blood
rushed into her face.

"Oh, he didn't--did he?"

The other three people were talking together; Lady Mary, opposite, was
joining with a bland smile of inward satisfaction in the discussion
between Ralph and Evelyn as to the rival merits of "Cochin Chinas" and
"Plymouth Rocks."

"If he did," said Charles, quietly, "it was only what we had often done
for each other before. There was a time, Miss Deyncourt, when your
brother and I both rowed in the same boat; and both, I fancy, split on
the same rock. It was not so long since--"

There was a sudden silence. The chicken question was exhausted. It
dropped dead. Charles left his sentence unfinished, and, turning to his
brother, the conversation became general.

* * * * *

In the evening, when the others had said good-night, Charles and Ralph
went out into the cool half-darkness to smoke, and paced up and down on
the lawn in the soft summer night. The two brothers had not met for some
time, and in an undemonstrative way they had a genuine affection for
each other, which showed itself on this occasion in walking about
together without exchanging a word.

At last Charles broke the silence. "I thought, when I settled to come
down here, you said you would be alone!" There was a shade of annoyance
in his to