Ismay nodded. “When he went in I thought you were lost. But it was lucky you got that photograph. I suppose it’s Abbotsford’s sovereigns you’ve been staving off your tradesmen with.” “They were no good to him”--cynically. “And not much to us; they’re all gone now.” Mrs. Trelane, who had scarcely spoken since that day of terror, who had not gone out lest some one should know her, seemed turned into another woman by the reading of that newspaper article. She looked at Ismay almost triumphantly. “Very nearly gone, but--they’re not all!” “Then,” said Ismay slowly, “you did take the diamonds! How did you find the courage? You were almost too frightened to walk when I pushed you in the door.” Once more that horrible suspicion sickened her. “I don’t know,” said her mother simply. “You see, the shock of it was over; after all, he was only a dead man, and I had seen dead people before.” “But you were mad; they’re no good to us,” the girl gasped; “we daren’t sell them.” “We do, to one man in London.” “As they are?” “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, he won’t dare ask questions. But once they are sold we can get away from here; go somewhere and start fresh. I won’t be comfortable till we are out of London. The sale of the diamonds will pay nearly everything, and leave us money in hand.” “Are you wise?” Ismay asked hardly. “Or are you running into a trap?” “Not I! I am too old a resident in ‘underground London’ for that, Ismay.” She stopped suddenly and listened. “Did I hear a bell ring?” “It’s the door-bell; some one has come for money. I’ll go.” Ismay left her mother huddling over their scanty fire--for the coal-merchant was like every one else, unpaid--and went to the front door. The shabby black gown that was her all was not even neat, and she had no collar on; her wonderful flaxen hair was coiled anyhow round her small head, but to the man who stood on the door-step her strange beauty was a revelation. Was this the ugly child Helen Trelane had shoved into a convenient boarding-school and forgotten? Instinctively he took off his hat, as if he had seen Circe herself. “Is it possible that you are Ismay?” he said. The girl looked at him with somber dislike, his ugliness repelled, almost sickened, her. And at the cold oiliness of his voice she recoiled as at something tangibly evil. Who was he that he knew her? He held out his hand, but she would not see it. “You don’t remember me, of course,” he smiled. “Is your mother in? I came to see her.” “I don’t know; she went out, but she may be back.” Some instinct made her lie, and the man knew it. “Tell her,” he said, “that Marcus Wray has come to see her.” And before Ismay could shut the door he stood beside her in the little white-paneled, turquoise-tiled hall, that felt so cold. Mrs. Trelane started when her daughter came in breathless from she knew not what. “A man who wants you,” she said; “his name is Wray. And he called me Ismay! Mother, who is he?”