have a way of intuitively getting at the bottom of
the thoughts of people for whom they care. Louisa guessed that beneath
Luke's levity and his school-boyish slang--which grew more apparent as
the man drew to the end of his narrative--that beneath his outward
flippancy there lay a deep substratum of puzzlement and anxiety.

The story as told by Luke sounded crude enough, almost melodramatic,
right out of the commonplace range of Louisa's usual every-day life.
Whilst she sat listening to this exotic tale of secret and incongruous
marriage and of those earthquakes and volcanic eruptions which had
seemed so remote when she had read about them nine years ago in the
newspapers, she almost thought that she must be dreaming; that she
would wake up presently in her bed at the Langham Hotel where she was
staying with aunt, and that she would then dress and have her
breakfast and go out to meet Luke, and tell him all about the idiotic
dream she had had about an unknown heir to the Earldom of Radclyffe,
who was a negro--or almost so--and was born in a country where there
were volcanoes and earthquakes.

How far removed from her at this moment did aunt seem, and father, and
the twins! Surely they could not be of the same world as this exotic
pretender to Uncle Radclyffe's affection, and to Luke's hitherto
undisputed rights. And as father and aunt and Mabel and Chris were
very much alive and very real, then this so-called Philip de Mountford
must be a creature of dreams.

"Or else an imposter."

She had said this aloud, thus breaking in on her own thoughts and his.
A feeling of restlessness seized her now. She was cold, too, for the
April breeze was biting and had searched out the back of her neck
underneath the sable stole and caused her to shiver in the spring
sunshine.

"Let us walk," she said, "a little--shall we?"

CHAPTER IV

NOTHING REALLY TANGIBLE

They walked up the gravelled walk under the chestnut trees, whereon
the leaf buds, luscious looking, with their young green surface
delicately tinged with pink, looked over ready to burst into
fan-shaped fulness of glory. The well-kept paths, the orderly flower
beds, and smoothly trimmed lawns looked all so simple, so obvious
beside the strange problem which fate had propounded to these two
young people walking up and down side by side--and with just a certain
distance between them as if that problem was keeping them apart.

And that intangible reality stood be