"Oh, Laura! What a very, very foolish thing to do! Don't you see there must have been a postmark on the envelope? Can't you remember anything about it? What was the handwriting like?" Again she felt she would like to shake Laura. "The address was typewritten--I do remember that. I thought--I don't know what I thought--I can't remember now what I did think. It looked like a circular, or a bill. But it was marked 'Urgent and Confidential'--or something to that effect." On their arrival in London a piece of good fortune befell Laura Pavely. Lord St. Amant had been in the same train, and when he saw her on the platform he at once put himself at her disposal. "Scotland Yard? I'll take you there myself. But Sir Angus Kinross would be out just now. It's no good going there till half-past two--at the earliest. I hope you'll both honour me by coming to luncheon in my rooms." Reached by an arch set between two houses in St. James's Street, and unknown to the majority of the people who daily come and go through that historic thoroughfare, is a tiny square--perhaps the smallest open space in London--formed by eight to ten eighteenth-century houses. But for the lowness of the houses, this curious little spot might be a bit of old Paris, a backwater of the Temple quarter, beyond the Louvre and the Hôtel de Ville, which only those tourists who have a passion either for Madame de Sévigné or for the young Victor Hugo ever penetrate. It was there that Lord St. Amant, some forty years back, when he was still quite a young man, had found a set of four panelled rooms exactly to his liking. And through the many vicissitudes which had befallen the funny little square, he had always contrived to preserve these rooms, though at last, in order to do so, he had had to become the leaseholder of the house of which they formed a part. But he kept the fact of this ownership to himself and to his lawyers, and it was through the latter that the other rooms--the ground floor and the top floor--were let to various quiet, humble folk. His lawyers also, had found for him the intelligent couple who acted as his caretakers, and who managed to make him extremely comfortable during the comparatively short periods he spent in London each year. Although his club was within a minute's walk, Lord St. Amant, very soon after his first occupancy of these rooms, had so arranged matters that, when he chose to order it, a cold luncheon or dinner could be sent in at a quarter of an hour's notice. And to-day the arrangement, of which he very rarely availed himself, stood him in good stead. * * * * * There are a certain number of people who go through life instinctively taking every chance of advancement or of useful friendship offered to them. Such a person was Katty Winslow.