rld, and why she
should have married Uncle Arthur I can't think."

"If she did marry him, you mean."

"If she did marry him, as you say," said Luke with a singular want of
conviction, which Louisa was not slow to remark.

"You think that this young man's story is true then?"

"I don't know what to think, and that's the truth."

"Tell me more," added Louisa simply.

"Well, this Philip's story goes on to say that his father--Uncle
Arthur--apparently soon tired of his exotic wife, for it seems that
two years after the marriage he left Martinique and never returned to
it to the day of his death."

"Pardon," said Louisa in her prim little way, "my interrupting you:
but have any of you--Lord Radclyffe I mean, or any of your
friends--any recollection of your uncle Arthur living at Martinique
for awhile? Two years seems a long time----"

"As a matter of fact, Uncle Arthur was a bit of a wastrel you know. He
never would study for anything. He passed into the navy--very well,
too, I believe--but he threw it all up almost as soon as he got his
commission, and started roaming about the world. I do know for a fact
that once his people had no news of him for about three or four years,
and then he turned up one fine day as if he had only been absent for a
week's shooting."

"When was that?"

"I can't tell you exactly. I was only a tiny kid at the time, not more
than three years old I should say. Yes, I do remember, now I come to
think of it, that Uncle Arthur was home the Christmas after my third
birthday. I have a distinct recollection of my dad telling me that
Uncle Arthur was one of my presents from Father Christmas, and of my
thinking what a rotten present it was. Later on in the nursery all of
us children were rather frightened of him, and we used to have great
discussions as to where this uncle came from. The Christmas present
theory was soon exploded, because of some difficulty about Uncle
Arthur not having been actually found in a stocking, and his being too
big anyway to be hidden in one, so we fell back on Jim's suggestion
that he was the man in the moon come down for a holiday."

"You," she said, "had your third birthday in 1883."

"Yes."

"That was the year, then, that your uncle Arthur came home from his
wanderings about the world, during which he had never given any news
of himself or his doings to any member of his family."

"By Jove, Lou, what a splendid examining magistrate you'd make!" was
Luke's u