Among other letters which Sir Gilbert Clare found on his breakfast-table on a certain September morning, was one which caused him to wrinkle his forehead and arch his shaggy eyebrows in a way by no means usual with him. Before laying it down he read it carefully through a second time, and then, unheedful of his other correspondence, and of the small china teapot at his elbow which was always brought in by Trant, the butler, the moment his master made his appearance, he lapsed into one of those fits of absent-mindedness which, in his case, were becoming more frequent with advancing years. Luigi, from the opposite side of the table, was watching him with furtive eyes, and wondering whether it would be possible to obtain a sly glance over the letter which had had such an unusual effect upon his “grandfather.” Could he have had his wish, he would have read as follows: “The Shrublands, Tuesday. “MY DEAR GILBERT.—Please turn to the signature before reading further and satisfy yourself that it is really I who am writing to you after all this long time; for indeed, cousin, it must be nearly, if not quite, a score of years since we met last (it was shortly after my marriage, I remember), and no communication of any kind has passed between us in the interim. “As you may perhaps recollect, I was always afflicted with a restless and roving disposition, and since poor dear Sir Thomas’s death (now eight years ago) I have felt no disposition to permanently settle anywhere, but have preferred to live a wandering, Bedouin kind of life, pitching my tent here, there, or anywhere, but never for very long at a time. It is a species of existence which, although it is lacking in those elements of stability so precious to the majority of my home-clinging, hearth-loving sex, has yet about it certain elements of variety and entertainment which, in my estimation, more than serve to counterbalance its shortcomings. “Finding myself here at the Shrublands in fulfilment of a promise of long-standing, and within half-a-dozen miles of your place, it has seemed to me (old memories even now not being quite dormant within me) that I could not do otherwise than make you aware of my propinquity and, further, intimate that if you can ‘put me up’ for a couple of nights—no longer—(together with my companion and maid), I shall be pleased to find myself once more under a roof which is associated in my mind with so many pleasant memories of the days that are no more. “Your affectionate cousin, “LOUISA PELL.” Between Sir Gilbert and Lady Pell, when they were young people, there had been a something which, if it could not in strictness be termed a romantic episode, yet had in it the possibilities of one, and, had the fates proved propitious, would probably have eventuated in a way which would have changed the current of both their lives.