“Gad! So she is his cousin. I sincerely hope she’s forgotten it.” Cylmer got up and seated himself at Lord De Fort’s table. “Why?” he demanded. “Speak out. I only saw the woman once in my life.” Lord De Fort obliged him. Under the sharp tongue of the old dandy every shred of honor and virtue fell away from Helen Trelane. Her life was set forth in detail, till Cylmer bit his lip as he sat silent. This was the woman to whom was given the guardianship of a young girl, this adventuress whom even Lord De Fort despised. “She has a daughter,” Cylmer said at last, with a faint gleam of hope that the girl might be different. “Who grew too clever and so was sent to school. I used to see the child, a skinny imp of ten, going to the pawn-shop of a morning. Helen Trelane was in deep waters then.” Cylmer got up to go, but something made him pause. “Tell me,” he said suddenly, “was this Mrs. Trelane ever a friend of Abbotsford’s?” “What! The man who was murdered? My dear sir, I don’t know. What put it into your head?” “It was just idle curiosity,” said Cylmer hastily. “I have no reason to think so,” for, after all, he had no right to drag any woman’s name into an affair like that. “Humph!” Lord De Fort gave a dry grunt. “I don’t think she ever knew him. Mrs. Trelane is much too clever a woman to have ever known a murdered man.” Cylmer’s head was dizzy as he left the club. To think of Cristiane down in the country, away from every one, with a woman like that, in her absolute power for years to come, made him burn with useless rage. A sudden thought came over him as he walked aimlessly down the street, his features drawn with worry. If he could see the woman now, before she knew of that iniquitous will, perhaps he could terrify her into letting him buy her off. His promise to Mr. Bolton would not stand in his way; that was only that he would not mention his knowledge of Sir Gaspard’s will--surely the very last piece of information he would wish to give to Helen Trelane. Mr. Cylmer took the first train for home. “I can make the country too hot to hold her, and I’ll tell her so,” he reflected as he got out at the little way station for Marchant’s Hold. But he was uncomfortably conscious that if she did not care, and said so, he was powerless. Mrs. Trelane, in immaculate black, was seated cozily over the drawing-room fire, outwardly calm, inwardly a prey to forebodings. She never looked up as the door opened, and unannounced, unexpected, Miles Cylmer walked in. She sprang to her feet, utterly astounded. Then she remembered he had been Sir Gaspard’s most intimate friend. “It is Mr. Cylmer, is it not?” she said quietly, peering at him in the firelight. “Have you any news?”