I have been asked to write very shortly what I know of General Fordibras and of my brother’s mysterious departures from England in the summer of the year 1904. God grant that all is well with him, and that these lines will be read by no others than the good friends who have not forgotten me in my affliction! It was, I think, in the December of the previous year that he first met the General in London, as I understood from him, at a fashionable bazaar at Kensington. This circumstance he related to me upon his return; and a sister’s interest in Joan Fordibras could not be but a growing one. I recollect that the General drove over one day in the spring from Newmarket and took luncheon with us. He is a fine, stately man, with a marked American accent, and a manner which clearly indicates his French birth. The daughter I thought a pretty winsome child; very full of quaint sayings and ideas, and so unlike our English girls. Ean had spoken of her so often that I was not prepared for the somewhat distant manner in which he treated her. Perhaps, in my heart, I found myself a little relieved. It has always been a sorrow to me to think that one I had loved so well as brother Ean might some day find my affection for him insufficient. General Fordibras, it appears, makes a hobby of yachting. He lives but little in America, I understand, but much in Paris and the South. Ean used to be very fond of the sea, but he has given it up so many years that I was surprised to hear how much a sailor he can be. His own pet things—the laboratory, the observatory in our grounds, his rare books, above all, his rare jewels—were but spoken of indifferently. General Fordibras is very little interested in them; while his daughter is sufficiently an American to care chiefly for our antiquities—of which I was able to show her many at Deepdene. When they left us, it was to return to London, I understood; and then to join the General’s yacht at Cherbourg. Ean spoke little to me of these people when they were gone. I felt quite happy that he made no mention of the daughter, Joan. Very foreign to his usual habits, however, he was constantly to and fro between our house and London; and I observed, not without some uneasiness, that he had become a little nervous. This was the more remarkable because he has always been singularly fearless and brave, and ready to risk his own life for others upon the humblest call. At first I thought that he must be out of health, and would have had Dr. Wilcox over to see him; but he always resents my attempts to coddle him (as he calls it), and so I forbore, and tried to find another reason.