"He kept all mine," she continued.

"Yes?" repeated Brent.

"I want them," she murmured, with a sudden lifting of her eyelids in her
visitor's direction. "I, naturally, I don't want them to--to fall into
anybody else's hands. You understand, Mr. Brent?"

"You want me to find them?" suggested Brent.

"Not to find them, that is, not to search for them," she replied
quickly. "I know where they are. I want you, if you please, to give them
back to me."

"Where are they?" asked Brent.

"He told me where he kept them," answered Mrs. Saumarez. "They are in a
cedar-wood cabinet, in a drawer in his bedroom."

"All right," said Brent. "I'll get them."

Was he mistaken in thinking that it was an unmistakable sigh of relief
that left Mrs. Saumarez's delicate red lips and that an additional
little flush of colour came into her cheeks? But her voice was calm and
even enough.

"Thank you," she said. "So good of you. Of course, they aren't of the
faintest interest to anybody. I can have them, then--when?"

Brent rose to his feet.

"When I was taught my business," he said, with a dry smile, "I'd a motto
drummed into my head day in and day out. DO IT NOW! So I guess I'll just
go round to my cousin's old rooms and get you that cabinet at once."

Mrs. Saumarez smiled. It was a smile that would have thrilled most men.
But Brent merely got a deepened impression of her prettiness.

"I like your way of doing things," she said. "That's business. You ought
to stop here, Mr. Brent, and take up your cousin's work."

"It would be a fitting tribute to his memory, wouldn't it?" answered
Brent. "Well, I don't know. But this letter business is the thing to do
now. I'll be back in ten minutes, Mrs. Saumarez."

"Let yourself in, and come straight here," she said. "I'll wait for
you."

Wallingford's old rooms were close at hand--only round the corner, in
fact--and Brent went straight to them and into the bedroom. He found the
cedar cabinet at once; he had, in fact, seen it the day before, but
finding it locked had made no attempt to open it. He carried it back to
Mrs. Saumarez, set it on her desk, and laid beside it a bunch of keys.

"I suppose you'll find this key amongst those," he said. "They're all
the private keys of his that I have anyway."

"Perhaps you will find it?" she suggested. "I'm a bad hand at that sort
of thing."

Brent had little difficulty in finding the right key. Unthinkingly, he
raised the lid of the cabinet--