or. For the last two or three years they had hardly met.

"But what are you up for?"

"Oh, well, you see, my uncle wants me to get called to the Bar, or
something, so I ran tip to have a look into it."

"Will that take a month?"

"Look here, old fellow, I've got nothing else to do--I don't see why I
shouldn't stretch it to three months. Besides, I want to spend some
time with my ancestors."

"With your ancestors?"

"In the British Museum: I'm writing a book about them. Queer lot some
of them were, too. Of course I'm specially interested in Agatha
Merceron; but I suppose you never heard of her."

Mr. Taylor confessed his ignorance, and Charlie, taking his arm, walked
him up and down the bank, while he talked on his pet subject. Agatha
Merceron was always interesting, and just now anything about the Pool
was interesting; for there was one reason for his visit to London which
he had not disclosed. Nettie Wallace had, when he met her one day,
incautiously dropped a word which seemed to imply that the other Agatha
was often in London. Nettie tried to recall her words; but the mischief
was done, and Charlie became more than ever convinced that he would
grow rusty if he stayed always at Langbury Court. In fact, he could
suffer it no longer, and to town he went.

For a long while Sigismund Taylor listened with no more than average
interest to Charlie's story, but it chanced that one word caught his
notice.

"She comes out of the temple," said Charlie, in the voice of hushed
reverence with which he was wont to talk of the unhappy lady.

"Out of where?" asked Mr. Taylor.

"The temple. Oh, I forgot, the temple is--" and Charlie gave a
description which need not be repeated.

Temple! temple! Where had he heard of a temple lately? Mr. Taylor
cudgelled his brains. Why--why--yes, she had spoken of a temple. She
said they met in a temple. It was a strange coincidence: the word had
struck him at the time. But then everybody knows that, at a certain
period, it was common enough to put up these little classical erections
as a memorial or merely as an ornament to pleasure-grounds. It must be
a mere coincidence. But--Mr. Taylor stopped short.

"What's up?" asked Charlie, who had finished his narrative, and was now
studying the faces of the ladies who rode past.

"Nothing," answered Mr. Taylor.

And really it was not much--taken by itself, entirely unworthy of
notice; even taken in conjunction with the temple, of no real