After moistening her lips once or twice nervously, Brooke spoke: “You asked to see one of the family, and said it was important that you should. If you are a gentleman, as you appear to be, of course you would not have come at such a time on trivial business. I am Brooke Lawton; what do you wish to ask?” For an instant the young fellow hesitated, thoroughly abashed; he had met with a variety of experiences in following his vocation of news collecting, but never before had he felt so much like beating a retreat, or his errand seemed so intrusive. Without any special claim to good looks or great stature, he had a certain clear-cut distinctiveness of feature, a mouth that stood the harsh test of the shaved upper lip, and eyes that, though they opened lengthwise rather than wide, looked as if they would take in the surroundings and atmosphere as well as the main object on which they were focussed. While he hesitated the newspaper which Brooke still clutched attracted him, and as he read its title he divined that Brooke had overheard the name he had just given the maid at the door and already associated him with the sneering article. Laying the card, which the maid had refused, upon the table, he said quietly, but with an earnestness that carried conviction: “I am Tom Brownell of the _Daily Forum_, the sheet you have in your hand. I know that there was a nasty leader in this morning’s issue that was slipped in, no one seems to know how, by some one who had animus or was hard hit in this T. Y. D. Q. deal. We pride ourselves upon getting at the truth of things that concern the public, so I have come here to settle for once and all the question of Mr. Lawton’s reported serious illness, by direct communication with some one of his family.” “You mean that you wish to know if my father is really ill? Then people do doubt it and think he may be merely hiding to avoid inquiry?” said Brooke, who now had full control of the voice that her friends called silvery, but which now had more of steel in its ring. “Moreover, you expect to learn the truth by _asking_ one of his family—what will that amount to if they choose to aid and abet the illness that your paper hints is part of a well-arranged covering of a retreat? If I should tell you that night before last, while my mother and I were waiting for him to return to dinner, my father had come home, unknown to us or the maids, letting himself in with a latch-key, which he used so seldom that we had forgotten its existence; when finally, attracted by a light under the door of this room, we opened it, he was in this chair, unconscious, stricken with apoplexy, his hand by the receiver of the overturned telephone; since then, though as far as physical life goes he is living, he has neither moved nor spoken nor recognized any one, nor can he swallow, and such liquid food as he has taken is given artificially,—if I tell you all this, still how can you be sure it is the truth?”