sly determined that even she
should not enter?

Then she found out that the stir only meant the luncheon hour. All
these people were going to eat and to chatter. Heavens above! how they
would chatter!

Her father said something about getting a cab, and trying to find a
decent hotel in which to have luncheon. But she scarcely heard. She
had just seen Luke disappearing through the crowd in company with Mr.
Dobson, and he had not even glanced back to look at her.

Every one whispered round her. Lady Ducies' nodding feathers worried
her almost to distraction. She allowed her father to lead her away,
and to make way for her through the crowd.

Presently she found herself sitting near him in a cab. He was silent
and would not look at her. He had begun to think that Luke had killed
his cousin; once she heard him repeating the word, "damnable!" twice
under his breath. Thus she knew that his loyalty was on the point of
giving way.

It seems that they had luncheon somewhere together. She did not take
the trouble to inquire where she was: an old-fashioned hotel somewhere
in Kensington, with table-cloths that looked as if they had been used
for several previous luncheons, and foreign waiters who wore
weird-looking shoes and trousers frayed at the edges.

To please her father she ate a little, though she thought that eating
must choke her. But it was wearisome to argue, and he--poor
dear--looked so miserable.

Time was precious and luncheon interminably slow: it was past two
o'clock when Louisa saw Luke again in the court room.

CHAPTER XXVIII

WHICH TELLS OF AN UNEXPECTED TURN OF EVENTS

It seems that coroner and jury had not spent quite so much time over
luncheon as the more or less interested spectators. When the crowd
began to file back again into the seats, the coroner had already
examined and dismissed one witness and was questioning another.

The past and present servants of the Grosvenor Square household would
all have to pass before the coroner during the course of this long
afternoon. It was only two o'clock and already the gas had to be
lighted--two incandescent burners just above the coroner's
table--hard, uncompromising lights, that threw a sickly green tinge on
every face and cast deep black shadows under every eye.

It was this light no doubt that made Luke's face seem positively
ghastly to Louisa: it looked almost like a death-mask, so deep and
cavernous did the eyes appear, and so hollow the