"That is entirely understood," Mr. Foley interrupted. "Now how will you come? Lyndwood Park is just sixty miles from London. To-day is Friday, isn't it? I shall motor down there sometime to-morrow. Why won't you come down with me?" Maraton shook his head. "If you will excuse me," he said, "I will not fix any time definitely. I have a good deal of correspondence still to attend to, and there is one little matter which might keep me in town till the afternoon." "Let me send a car up for you," Mr. Foley suggested. "Thank you," Maraton replied, "I have already hired one for a time." "Then come just at what time suits you," Mr. Foley begged,--"the sooner the better, of course. Apart from that, I shall be about the place all day." In Buckingham Gate, Maraton came slowly to a standstill. The coach which he had seen in the Park an hour ago was drawn up in front of a large hotel. The young man who was driving it had just come down the steps and was drawing on his gloves. They met almost face to face. "Am I to speak to you?" the young man asked. "You had better," Maraton assented. "Tell me what you are doing here?" "I was bored with Paris," the young man answered. "My friends were all coming here. I had no idea that we were likely to meet." Maraton looked at him thoughtfully. As they stood face to face at that moment, there was a certain strange likeness between them, a likeness of the husk only. "I do not wish to interfere with your movements," Maraton said calmly. "Where you are is nothing to me. I proposed that you should remain away from London simply because I fancied that it would be easier for you to observe the conditions which exist between us. So long as you remember them, however, your whereabouts are indifferent to me." The young man laughed a little nervously. "You're not over-cordial!" Maraton shrugged his shoulders. "The world in which you live," he remarked, "is a training school, I suppose, for false sentiment. The slight kinship that there is between us is of no account to me. I simply remind you once more that it is to your advantage to neither know me or to know of me. Remember that, and it may be London or Paris or New York--wherever you choose." The young man remounted his coach, and Maraton passed on. He walked without a pause to the square in which his house was situated. Here he found Aaron hard at work and, sitting down at once, he began to sign his letters. "No end of people have been here," Aaron announced. "I have got rid of them all." "Good!" Maraton said shortly. "By-the-bye, Aaron, isn't there a meeting to-night at the Clarion?" Aaron nodded. "David Ross is going to speak. He can move them when he starts. My sister is going to call here for me, and I thought if you didn't want me, I'd like to go." "We will all go together," Maraton decided. "We can creep in somewhere at the back, I suppose. I want to hear how they do it." The young man's face lit up with joy.