venial sin--the taking of a bribe for a trivial
service--now suddenly assumed giant proportions--a crime almost,
punished by a stern dismissal from Mr. Luke.

He went without venturing on further protest, and Luke, left standing
alone in the hall, once more put his hand on the knob of the library
door. This time he tried to turn it. But the door had been locked from
the inside.

CHAPTER VIII

AND THUS THE SHADOW DESCENDED

From within the hum of a man's voice--speaking low and
insistently--still came softly through. Luke, with the prodigality of
youth, would have given ten years of his life for the gift of
second-sight, to know what went on between those four walls beyond the
door where he himself stood expectant, undecided, and more than
vaguely anxious.

"Luke!"

It was quite natural that Louisa should stand here beside him, having
come to him softly, noiselessly, like the embodiment of moral
strength, and a common-sense which was almost a virtue.

"Uncle Rad," he said quietly, "has locked himself in with this man."

"Who is it, Luke?"

"The man who calls himself Philip de Mountford."

"How do you know?"

"How does one," he retorted, "know such things?"

"And Parker let him in?"

"He gave Parker a five-pound note. Parker is only a grasping fool. He
concocted the story of Mr. Dobson and the lease. He is always
listening at key-holes, and he knows that Mr. Dobson often sends up a
clerk with papers for Uncle Rad's signature. Those things are not
very difficult to manage. If one man is determined, and the other
corruptible, it's done sooner or later."

"Is Lord Radclyffe safe with that man, do you think?"

"God grant it," he replied fervently.

Jim and Edie made a noisy irruption into the hall, and Luke and Louisa
talked ostentatiously of indifferent things--the weather, Lent, and
the newest play, until the young people had gathered up coats and hats
and banged the street door to behind them, taking their breeziness,
their optimism, away with them out into the spring air, and leaving
the shadows of the on-coming tragedy to foregather in every angle of
the luxurious house in Grosvenor Square.

And there were Luke de Mountford and Louisa Harris left standing alone
in the hall; just two very ordinary, very simple-souled young people,
face to face for the first time in their uneventful lives with the
dark problem of a grim "might be." A locked door between them and the
decisions of Fate; a worl