an
inquisitive robin perched himself on the railings and then flew away
accompanying her and another all the way along as far as the gates.

Two pictures, vivid and distinct: that evening in Brussels, and the
morning in Battersea Park, her first meeting with Luke after his
letter to her--the letter which had come to her in the Palace Hotel
and which had made her the happiest woman in all the world.
Memory--satisfied--had at last emptied the storehouse of that one cell
and left Louisa Harris standing here, staring at her father, her ears
buzzing with the idle and irresponsible chatter of society jackdaws,
her mind seeing all that had happened outside 1 Cromwell Road: the cab
stopping, the chauffeur terrified, the crowd collecting, the police
taking notes. Her mind saw it as if her bodily eyes had been there,
and all that her father told her seemed but the recapitulation of what
she knew already.

"Where," she said after awhile, "is the dead man now?"

"I don't know," he replied. "I should imagine they would keep the
body at the police station until the morning. I don't suppose they'd
be such mugs as to disturb Lord Radclyffe at this time of night; the
shock might kill the old man."

"I suppose they are quite sure that it is Philip de Mountford who was
killed?"

"Why, yes; he had his pocket-book, his cards, his letters on him, and
money too--robbery was not the object of the crime."

"It was Philip de Mountford then?"

"Good God, yes! Of whom were you thinking?"

"I was thinking of Luke," she replied simply.

The old man said nothing more. Had he spoken at all then it would have
been to tell her that he, too, was thinking of Luke and that there was
perhaps not a single person in the magnificent house at that moment
who was not--in some way or another--thinking of Luke.

The hostess came in, elegant and worldly, with banal words to request
the pleasure of hearing Miss Harris sing.

"It is so kind of you," she said, "to offer. I have never heard you,
you know, and people say you have such a splendid voice. But perhaps
you would rather not sing to-night?"

She spoke English perfectly, but with a slight Scandinavian
intonation, which seemed to soften the banality of her words. Being
foreign, she thought less of concealing her sympathy, and was much
less fearful of venturing on delicate ground.

She held out a small, exquisitely gloved hand and laid it almost
affectionately on the younger woman's arm.

"I a