“Let us suppose once more,” persisted Luigi. “The bonds are sold, let us say; their loss is discovered; as a consequence, a hue-and-cry is set afoot and the missing numbers advertised. In that case what is to prevent their being traced back to the first vendor of them after their—hem! abstraction?” The Captain smiled as he shook the ash out of his meerschaum. “The answer to that is very simple,” he said. “I shall know how to put the bonds on the market through such a channel as will render it an impossibility for them ever to be traced back.” Three days later uncle and nephew, attired in their travelling suits as if fresh from their journey across the Channel, arrived at Withington Chase. Captain Verinder felt it was due to Sir Gilbert that he should personally give him back the young Telemachus who for the past four weeks had been entrusted to his charge. By this time he and Luigi had settled all the details of their plot, as far as it was possible for them to do so beforehand, and away from the spot. CHAPTER XXXV. MATTERS AT THE CHASE No great measure of persuasion was needed on the part of Sir Gilbert Clare in order to induce Lady Pell to extend the term of her visit at Withington Chase. Sooth to say, age was beginning to tell somewhat upon her ladyship. With advancing years her craving to be continually on the move from place to place began to work less powerfully within her. There were even times when a growing sense of loneliness made itself sadly felt, and when the knowledge that she was both childless and homeless would unseal in her heart a fountain of poignant regrets which would well to her eyes in tears, all the more salt, it may be, in that they were, as a rule, so sternly repressed. Somehow the Chase seemed more of a home to her than any place she had visited for years. There was a sweet nameless charm about the old mansion which affected her—she could hardly have told how. Even when she had been a month there she felt no desire to pack up her trunks and betake herself elsewhere. This, for her, was an altogether novel experience. It may be that Lady Pell’s liking for the Chase was due in part, if not wholly, to her recollection of a certain happy season she had spent there when in her teens. It had been the scene of the first and, possibly, the only romance her life had known—a poor little futile romance, as events had proved—but perhaps none the less cherished on that account; and it was still the home of the man who had been the ideal of her girlish dreams.