He took her hand--that neatly gloved, small hand of hers--and put it under his arm. For one moment it seemed as if he would kiss that tiny and tantalizing place just below the thumb where the pink palm shows in the opening of the glove. Luke was not a demonstrative lover, he was shy and English and abrupt; but this morning--was it the breath of spring in the air, the scent of the Roman hyacinths in that bed over there, or merely the shadow of a tiny cloud on the uniform blue of his life's horizon that gave a certain rugged softness to his touch, as his hand lingered over that neat glove which nestled securely in among the folds of his coat sleeve? "Now," she said simply. "Have you," he asked with abrupt irrelevance, "read your paper all through this morning?" "Not all through. Only the important headlines." "And you saw nothing about a claim to a peerage?" "Nothing." "Well! that's all about it. A man has sprung up from nowhere in particular, who claims to be my uncle Arthur's son, and, therefore, heir presumptive to the title and all." Luke heaved a deep sigh, as if with this brief if ungrammatical statement, his own heart had been unburdened of a tiresome load. "Your uncle Arthur?" she repeated somewhat bewildered. "Yes. You never knew him, did you?" "No," she said, "I never knew him, though as a baby I must have seen him. I was only three, I think, when he died. But I never heard that he had been married. I am sure father never knew." "Nor did I, nor did Uncle Rad, nor any of us. The whole thing is either a thunderbolt or . . . an imposture." "Tell me," she said, "a little more clearly, Luke dear, will you? I am feeling quite muddled." And now it was she who led the way to the isolated seat beneath that group of silver birch, whose baby leaves trembled beneath the rough kiss of the cool April breeze. They sat down together and on the gravelled path in front of them a robin hopped half shyly, half impertinently, about and gazed with tiny, inquisitive eyes on the doings of these big folk. All around them the twitter of bird throats filled the air with its magic, its hymn to the reawakened earth, and drowned in this pleasing solitude the distant sounds of the busy city that seemed so far away from this secluded nook inhabited by birds and flowers, and by two dwellers in Fata Morgana's land. "Tell me first," said Louisa, in her most prosy, most matter of fact tone of voice, "all that is known about your uncle Arthur."