"Well, up to now, I individually knew very little about him. He was the next eldest brother to Uncle Rad, and my father was the youngest of all. When Uncle Rad succeeded to the title, Arthur was heir-presumptive of course. But as you know he died--as was supposed unmarried--nineteen years ago, and my poor dear father was killed in the hunting field the following year. I was a mere kid then and the others were babies--orphans the lot of us. My mother died when Edith was born. Uncle Rad was said to be a confirmed bachelor. He took us all to live with him and was father, mother, elder brother, elder sister to us all. Bless him!" Luke paused abruptly, and Louisa too was silent. Only the song of a thrush soaring upward to the skies called for that blessing which neither of them at that moment could adequately evoke. "Yes," said Louisa at last, "I knew all that." Lord Radclyffe and his people were all of the same world as herself. She knew all about the present man's touching affection for the children of his youngest brother, but more especially for Luke on whom he bestowed an amount of love and tender care which would have shamed many a father by its unselfish intensity. That affection was a beautiful trait in an otherwise not very lovable character. "I daresay," resumed Luke after a little while, "that I have been badly brought up. I mean in this way, that if--if the whole story is true--if Uncle Arthur did marry and did have a son, then I should have to go and shift for myself and for Jim and Frank and Edith. Of course Uncle Rad would do what he could for us, but I should no longer be his heir--and we couldn't go on living at Grosvenor Square and----" "Aren't you rambling on a little too fast, dear?" said Louisa gently, whilst she beamed with an almost motherly smile--the smile that a woman wears when she means to pacify and to comfort--on the troubled face of the young man. "Of course I am," he replied more calmly, "but I can't help it. For some days now I've had a sort of feeling that something was going to happen--that--well, that things weren't going to go right. And this morning when I got up, I made up my mind that I would tell you." "When did you hear first, and from whom?"