small items of news of the neighbourhood.
'The Falconers have left,' he said. 'I wonder what they found to amuse
them at Lawrence's place?'

'Lawrence himself, perhaps,' said Mr. Semple dryly.

'But Lady Falconer does not even laugh at people,' replied Peter. 'I
thought her a very charming woman.'

'She is a very charming woman,' replied Mr. Semple, 'and she used to
know your mother long ago in Spain.'

Peter took his cigar out of his mouth, and turned interrogatively
towards the lawyer. 'I don't suppose she was able to tell you
anything?' he said, with a sharp note of interest in his voice.

'She was able to tell me nothing,' said Mr. Semple, 'except a woman's
impression of a conversation she had with a Spanish serving-woman.'

'I should like to hear all she had to say,' said Peter briefly.

'Ships sailing for Argentine stop at Lisbon and take up passengers
there,' said Mr. Semple. 'I have been to Lisbon since I last saw you.
Mrs. Ogilvie paid the passage-money for a married couple and a child
who sailed from that place in December of the year in which your
brother is said to have died.'

CHAPTER IX

'I think I 'll go over and see Toffy,' said Peter to himself one day in
the following week. Mr. Semple had been down to Bowshott again,
bringing a mass of correspondence with him, and had left that morning.
Nigel Christopherson was ill at Hulworth with one of his usual
appalling colds, which brought him as nearly as possible to the grave
every time they attacked him. Peter once again read through the
letters and papers which he and the family lawyer had pored over until
the small hours of this morning, and then he ordered his horse and rode
over to see his friend.

No one ever arrived at Hulworth without remarking on the almost
grotesque ugliness of the house. It was a flat-faced, barrack-like
residence, with a stuccoed front and rows of ill-designed windows. A
grim-looking flight of stone stairs with iron railings led to the front
door, and beyond that were large and hideous rooms filled with
treasures of art incongruously hung on lamentable wall-papers or
pendent over pieces of furniture which would have made a connoisseur's
eyes ache. The house and its furnishings were a strange mixture; the
owner of the grim pile, be it said, had a mind which presented a blank
to the dictates of art, and it puzzled him sorely to determine which of
his possessions was beautiful and which was not. He had hear