“And at any rate the men on the other side--the Russians or some one, I don't know who--were in the habit of watching Jem so as to prevent his going up into this unexplored country. Well, when the report of his death was put in the newspapers it was left uncontradicted, so that these men should think he was dead, and not be on the look-out for him. Do you understand?” Mrs. Agar had raised her head, with listening, attentive eyes. It seemed as if a voice had come to her across the years from the distant past. A voice telling an old story, which had never been forgotten, but merely laid aside in the memory among those things that never are forgotten. Finding Arthur's troubled gaze upon her, she seemed to recollect herself with a little gesture of her hand to her breast as if breathing were difficult. “That does not sound like a thing Jem would do,” she said, with one of those flashes of shrewd observation which sometimes come to inconsequent people, and make it difficult for those around them to be sure how much they see and how much passes unobserved. “It was not Jem, it was this other man.” “Which other man?” Mrs. Agar gave a little gasp, as if she had found something she feared to find. “The man who told me--he was Jem's superior officer.” “When did he tell you--where?” “He came to see me at Cambridge, and brought those things of Jem's,” replied Arthur. So far from feeling guilty at thus revealing all that he had promised to keep secret, he was now beginning to experience some pangs of conscience at the recollection of a concealment which, by a supreme effort, had been made to extend to four months. There was a sly gleam in Mrs. Agar's eyes. A close observer knowing her well could have seen the cunning written on her face, for it was cheap and obvious. “Oh!” she said indifferently, “and what sort of man was he?” Arthur pondered with a deliberation that almost maddened her. “Oh!” he replied at length, “a small man, dark, with a sunburnt face; a Jew, I should think. He was rather well dressed--in the military style, of course.” “Yes,” muttered Mrs. Agar. “Yes.” There was a long silence, during which Mrs. Agar reflected, as deeply, perhaps, as she had ever reflected in her life. Then she discovered something for herself which had of necessity been pointed out to her son--a subtle divergence of character. “But,” she said, “of course Jem may never come back from this expedition. It _must_ be very dangerous.” “It is very dangerous.” Mrs. Agar's sigh of relief was quite audible. It is thus that nature sometimes betrays human nature. “Did _he_ say that? Did _he_ think that of it?” Seymour Michael's opinion still had value in her eyes. “Yes,” the reply came slowly; “he said that we might almost look upon Jem as a dead man.”