"Well, in a British colony it was bound to happen. Whether somebody put him up to it out there, or whether he merely sucked the information in from nowhere in particular, I can't say: certain it is that he did soon discover that the name he bore was one of the best known in England, and that his father must, as a matter of fact, have been own brother to the earl of Radclyffe. So he wrote to Uncle Rad." Louisa was silent. She was absorbed in thought and for the moment Luke had come to the end of what he had to say--or, rather, of what he meant to say just now. That there was more to come, Louisa well knew. Commonplace women have a way of intuitively getting at the bottom of the thoughts of people for whom they care. Louisa guessed that beneath Luke's levity and his school-boyish slang--which grew more apparent as the man drew to the end of his narrative--that beneath his outward flippancy there lay a deep substratum of puzzlement and anxiety. The story as told by Luke sounded crude enough, almost melodramatic, right out of the commonplace range of Louisa's usual every-day life. Whilst she sat listening to this exotic tale of secret and incongruous marriage and of those earthquakes and volcanic eruptions which had seemed so remote when she had read about them nine years ago in the newspapers, she almost thought that she must be dreaming; that she would wake up presently in her bed at the Langham Hotel where she was staying with aunt, and that she would then dress and have her breakfast and go out to meet Luke, and tell him all about the idiotic dream she had had about an unknown heir to the Earldom of Radclyffe, who was a negro--or almost so--and was born in a country where there were volcanoes and earthquakes. How far removed from her at this moment did aunt seem, and father, and the twins! Surely they could not be of the same world as this exotic pretender to Uncle Radclyffe's affection, and to Luke's hitherto undisputed rights. And as father and aunt and Mabel and Chris were very much alive and very real, then this so-called Philip de Mountford must be a creature of dreams. "Or else an imposter." She had said this aloud, thus breaking in on her own thoughts and his. A feeling of restlessness seized her now. She was cold, too, for the April breeze was biting and had searched out the back of her neck underneath the sable stole and caused her to shiver in the spring sunshine. "Let us walk," she said, "a little--shall we?" CHAPTER IV NOTHING REALLY TANGIBLE