"I can't tell you exactly. I was only a tiny kid at the time, not more than three years old I should say. Yes, I do remember, now I come to think of it, that Uncle Arthur was home the Christmas after my third birthday. I have a distinct recollection of my dad telling me that Uncle Arthur was one of my presents from Father Christmas, and of my thinking what a rotten present it was. Later on in the nursery all of us children were rather frightened of him, and we used to have great discussions as to where this uncle came from. The Christmas present theory was soon exploded, because of some difficulty about Uncle Arthur not having been actually found in a stocking, and his being too big anyway to be hidden in one, so we fell back on Jim's suggestion that he was the man in the moon come down for a holiday." "You," she said, "had your third birthday in 1883." "Yes." "That was the year, then, that your uncle Arthur came home from his wanderings about the world, during which he had never given any news of himself or his doings to any member of his family." "By Jove, Lou, what a splendid examining magistrate you'd make!" was Luke's unsophisticated comment on Louisa's last remark. But she frowned a little at this show of levity, and continued quietly: "And your uncle, according to this so-called Philip de Mountford, was married in 1881 in Martinique, his son was born in 1882, and he left Martinique in 1883 never to return." "Hang it all, Lou!" exclaimed the young man almost roughly, "that is all surmise." "I know it is, dear; I was only thinking." "Thinking what?" "That it all tallies so very exactly and that this--this Philip de Mountford seems in any case to know a great deal about your Uncle Arthur, and his movements in the past." "There's no doubt of that; and----" Luke paused a moment and a curious blush spread over his face. The Englishman's inborn dislike to talk of certain subjects to his women folk had got hold of him, and he did not know how to proceed. As usual in such cases the woman--unmoved and businesslike--put an end to his access of shyness. "The matter is--or may be--too serious, dear, for you to keep any of your thoughts back from me at this juncture." "What I meant was," he said abruptly, "that this Philip might quite well be Uncle Arthur's son you know; but it doesn't follow that he has any right to call himself Philip de Mountford, or to think that he is Uncle Rad's presumptive heir." "That will of course depend on his proofs--his papers and so on," she assented calmly. "Has any one seen them?" "At the time--it was sometime last November--that he first wrote to Uncle Rad, he had all his papers by him. He wrote from St. Vincent; have I told you that?" "No."