“Till then,” he ended kindly, “please do not fret about your own or your daughter’s future, for I can promise you that I will arrange something. “Affectionately yours, “G. LE MARCHANT.” There was not a word in it about his daughter. Sir Gaspard was too careful of her to do things blindly, but he meant when he wrote to provide for Helen Trelane, even if she turned out unfit to be trusted with his child. Ismay took the note calmly from her mother’s nerveless hand. “Who’s Gaspard le Marchant, and why is he yours affectionately?” she asked curiously. “But it doesn’t matter. The chief thing is that he is ‘yours affectionately’ just in the nick of time. What’s in the other note?” “I don’t know.” Mrs. Trelane lay back, nerveless, in her hard chair; she had conquered fate once more, but the relief was too acute yet to be pleasant. With a shaking finger she opened the other note, and there fell out two strips of paper. “You may need this, and you and I can settle later. “G. LE M.” The yellow slip enclosed was a check for a hundred pounds. When another woman would have cried with gratitude, Mrs. Trelane only caught her breath cynically. “A fool and his money were soon parted,” but what a mercy it was that he had been so easily managed! “What about the music-halls, Ismay?” she said bitterly, lifting her triumphant eyes to her daughter’s astonished face. “Go out,” said the girl, “and cash this, and we’ll have meat for lunch. But tell me first, who is he? And why didn’t you try him before?” “He is Sir Gaspard le Marchant, and the only relation I own. And I did try him before, in a way. He sent me money once before, but I didn’t need it especially, and I didn’t want to have to go and stay in a stupid country house or have my dear cousin come hunting me up. So I did not write to him till it looked as though camping on the cold, cold ground was going to be our fate.” “Is he married?” “His wife has been dead for years.” “And you never tried to be Lady Le Marchant?” Mrs. Trelane’s cheek grew slowly red. “His first wife, my dear, was a Russian adventuress,” she returned cuttingly, “and only a born adventuress could hope to succeed her. You have all the qualifications--you might try for the place.” And she walked airily out of the room, quite transformed from the haggard woman she had been when she entered it. But, though she was tall and fair and handsome, she was not in the least like the girl who sat alone looking with eager interest at the Le Marchant seal, the Le Marchant motto, on the back of one of the torn envelopes. No Le Marchant and no Trelane had ever had those strange eyes, that uncanny, colorless beauty, that mouth as red as new blood.