He picked up several knick-knacks which were about the room and examined them, as if he were considering what ought to be their fate. Some of them, which bore unmistakable traces of feminine handiwork and taste, he threw, after the portrait, into the fire. He opened a large despatch-box which stood upon a table at one side. From among its varied contents he took all sorts of things--a glove, a knot of ribbon, a menu card, some programmes of dances, a chocolate bonbon, a variety of trivial impedimenta with which one would hardly have thought such a man would have cared to be troubled. Last of all he took out four or five envelopes addressed to himself in what was evidently a woman's hand. "My love letters!--love letters! I doubt if there was a word of love in one of them, except that which came to me this morning. In our courtship hitherto love letters have scarcely entered. There has been no opportunity. It is another case of what might have been--and yet these are my love letters, for they were written by her hand, and these are my love tokens, because they are tokens of certain passages which she has had with me. Nor must they become their spoil. These sort of tales find their way into so many sorts of papers that, for her sake, it is well that I have had time enough to destroy what might tend to show that I ever was engaged--save the mark!--to marry Miss Jardine." He threw the letters and the various trivialities together into the fire, breaking up the coals to enable them to burn the faster. He stood watching their destruction. When they were entirely consumed he turned away, the finger of his right hand in his waistcoat pocket, apparently feeling for something which was there. "I think that that is all; now I'm ready." "That, young man, is just as well, because so am I." The voice came from behind his back. Mr. Townsend showed no sign of being startled, nor did he evince any anxiety to turn and inquire into the speaker's personality. He stood, for a moment, as if he was endeavouring to recall to his memory the tones of the speaker's voice. He turned at last, at his leisure, and with a smile-- "Mr. Haines?" It was Mr. Haines. His sudden appearance was explained by the fact that he had obviously just stepped from behind a pair of curtains which concealed the entrance to an inner room. He still held one of the curtains in his hand. He eyed Mr. Townsend in silence, one hand being in suggestive proximity to the hip pocket in his trousers in which the Westerner is apt to keep his gun. "Yes, I am Mr. Haines." "I am glad to have the pleasure of seeing you, Mr. Haines. Might I ask you to be good enough to select your own chair?" Mr. Haines took no notice of Mr. Townsend's gesture of almost exaggerated courtesy. Manner and tone alike were dogged. "I've been watching you." "I am gratified to think that any action of mine should have been esteemed worthy your attention."