Kate had more than half a mind to let 4,073 Pad alone. She was tired, and somehow in spite of all her successes she was a good deal dispirited. The British public had bought no less than four great rubber companies that she had offered them; the shares were all at a premium; everybody was pleased; and she had transferred her own profits safely into land and trustee securities. Since her first burst of success, money had simply rolled in on her, and already it had ceased to give her amusement. Success lay sour in her mouth. She asked Fortune for just one thing more. Because she was a woman she could not go and get it for herself. She told herself that it was only a convention that held her back--but she shuddered and chilled all over at the thought of breaking that convention. She sat in a deep soft chair, twisting her long gloves into a hard string, and staring into the glow of the fire, and then with a "Faugh" at her own weakness, she threw the gloves onto the fender, and walked across to a telephone that stood on a side-table. "Four-owe-seven-three Pad, please. No, Forty-seventy-three Paddington. Yes. Hullo? Hullo? Is that Four-nought-seven-three? This is Miss O'Neill. Liverpool rang up to say you wanted to speak to me. Who is that, please?" "No one you know," came in the small clear voice of the telephone. "One of those sort of people who writes letters to the papers above some such signature as 'Well-Wisher.'" "If you don't give me your name," said Kate sharply, "I shall ring off." "I don't think you will when I tell you I'm going to give you some news about your father." "My father unfortunately is dead. You've got hold of the wrong Miss O'Neill." The telephone laughed. "Not a bit of it, it's the lady who is known generally as Kate O'Neill I'm speaking with, but whose real name is Katherine Meredith." Now Kate knew that Mrs. Craven was only "Aunt Jane" by courtesy and adoption, and had naturally wondered many times over who her real people might have been. She had always been a very practical young woman, and had not worried herself unduly over the matter; but still being human, she had her share of curiosity, and though the subject had always been strictly taboo at the house in Princes' Park, still that did not hinder her from discussing it with her own thoughts. And now, "Katherine Meredith!" "I think you had better tell me who you are," she said to the telephone. "I prefer anonymity. Do you know Day-Pearce?" "No. Yes, perhaps I do, if you mean Sir Edward Day-Pearce, the West African man. I don't know him personally." "All the better," rasped the telephone. "Anyway, he is lecturing to-night in a non-Conformist temple in Westbourne Grove--the Athenæum, they call it. Begins at eight. He's certain to say something about Meredith. I should try to go if I were you."