For a long while Mr. Philip Slotman sat in deep thought. About Joan Meredyth there was a mystery, and it was a mystery that might be well worth solving. “I’ll hunt it out,” he muttered. “I’ll have to work back. Let me see, there was that old General—General—?” He frowned, Ah! he had it now, for his memory was a good one. “General Bartholomew! That was the name,” Slotman muttered. “And that is where I commence my hunt!” CHAPTER XV “TO THE MANNER BORN” Starden Hall was one of those half-timbered houses in the possession of which Kent and Sussex are rich. It was no great mansion, but a comfortable, rambling old house, that had been built many a generation ago, and had been added to as occasion required by thoughtful owners, who had always borne in mind the architecture and the atmosphere of the original, and so to-day it covered a vast quantity of ground, being but one storey high, and about it spread flower gardens and noble park-land that were delights to the eye. And this place was hers. It belonged to her, the girl who a few short weeks ago had been earning three pounds a week in a City office, and whose nightmare had been worklessness and starvation. Helen Everard watched the girl closely. “To the manner born,” she thought. And yet there was that about Joan that she would have altered, a coldness, an aloofness. Too often the beautiful mouth was set and hard, never cruel, yet scornful. Too often those lustrous eyes looked coldly out on to a world that was surely smiling on her now. “There’s something—” the elder woman thought, for she was a clever and capable woman—a woman who could see under the surface of things, a woman who had loved and suffered, and had risen triumphant over misfortunes, which had been so many and so dire that they might have crushed a less valiant spirit. General Bartholomew had explained briefly: “The child is alone in the world. There is something I don’t quite understand, Helen. It is about a marriage—” The old gentleman paused. “Look here, I’ll tell you. I had a letter from Lady Linden, an old friend, and she begged me to find Joan and bring her and her young husband together again.” “Then she is married?” “No, that is, I—I don’t know. ’Pon my soul, I don’t know—can’t make head or tail of it! She says she isn’t, and, by George! she isn’t a girl who would lie; but if she isn’t—well, I’m beaten, Helen. I can’t make it out. At any rate, I did bring her and the lad, and a fine lad he is too, George Alston’s son, together. And he left the house without seeing me, and afterwards the girl told me that he was practically a stranger to her, and that there had never been any marriage at all. At the same time she asked me not to write to Lady Linden, and she said that it was no business of hers, which was true, come to that. And so—so now she’s come into this money, and she is utterly alone in the world, and wants to go to Starden to live—why, my dear—”