"You were coming through the street? I suppose you often pass through Sidmouth Street!" retorted the Archdeacon with withering sarcasm. But his wrath was growing cool. "Very often," said Jack so sturdily that his father could not but believe him, and was further sobered. "I saw a back I thought I knew, and I came in here. I had no intention of offending you, sir. And now I think I will go," he added, looking about him uneasily, "and--and speak to you another time." But the Archdeacon's anger was quite gone now. A wretched embarrassment was taking its place as it dawned upon him that after all Jack might by pure chance have seen him enter and have followed innocently. In that case how had he committed himself by his outbreak--how indeed! "Jack," he said, "I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon, Jack. I see I was mistaken. Do not go, my boy, until I have explained to you why I am here. It is not," he went on, smiling a wretched smile at the pretty faces round him, "quite the place in which you would expect to find me." "It is certainly not the place in which I did expect to find you," Jack said bluntly. And he looked about him, also in a dazed fashion, as if the Archdeacon and the photographs were not a conjunction for which he was prepared. "No, no," assented the Archdeacon, wincing, however. "But it is the simplest piece of business in the world which has brought me here." And he recalled to his son's memory their talk at the club. "Ah, I understand!" Jack said, as if he did, too. "You have come about your friend's business." The Archdeacon could not hide a spasm. "Well, not precisely. To tell you the truth, there never was a friend, Jack. But," he went on hurriedly, holding up a hand of dignified protest, for Jack was looking at him queerly, very queerly, "you know me too well to doubt me, I hope, when I say there is no ground for doubt?" The son's keen eyes met the father's for an instant, and then a rare smile softened them as the men's hands met. "I do, sir. You may be sure of that!" he said brightly. The Archdeacon cleared his throat. "Thank you," he said; "now I think you will understand the position. Miss Kent, the young lady in question, lives here; and I have called to-day to see her by appointment." "The dickens you have! It is like your impudence!" cried some one--some one behind them. Both men swung round at the interruption. In the doorway, holding the door open with one hand, while with the other set against the wall he balanced himself on his feet, stood a smart Jewish-looking man. "The dickens you have!" this gentleman repeated, leering on the two most unpleasantly. "So that is your game, is it? Ain't you ashamed of yourself," he continued, addressing himself to the shuddering Archdeacon--and how far away seemed Vinnells and the lavender, and the calm delights of Studbury at that moment!--"ain't you ashamed of yourself, old man?"