He turned over his letters. 'Apparently not. Stay; I have not looked in the safe. He got up and threw open the safe. Then he took up a packet. 'Again!' he cried almost with a scream. 'Again! See this!' He tossed on the table the packet which he had himself, only ten minutes before, placed in the safe with his own hands. 'See this! Thus they laugh at me--thus they torment me!' He hurled the packet to the other side of the room, returned to his chair, and laid his head upon his hands, sighing deeply. Elsie took up the parcel. It was rather a bulky manuscript. The title you have heard. She untied the tape and turned over the pages. The work, she saw, was the Autobiography of Edmund Gray. _And it was in the handwriting of Mr. Dering!_ She replaced it in the safe. 'Put everything there,' she said, 'which is sent to you. Everything. Do you know anything at all about this man Edmund Gray?' 'Nothing, my dear child, absolutely nothing. I never saw the man. I never heard of him. Yet he has planted himself upon me. He holds his Chambers on a letter of recommendation from me. I was his introducer to the manager of the Bank--I--in my own handwriting--as they thought. He drew a cheque of 720_l_. upon me eight years ago. And he has transferred thirty-eight thousand pounds' worth of shares and stock to his own address.' 'Added to which, he has been the cause of suspicion and vile accusation against my lover and my brother, which it will cost a great deal of patience to forgive. Dear Mr. Dering, I am so sorry for you. It is most wonderful and most mysterious. Suppose,' she laid her hand upon his--'suppose that I was to find out for you----' 'You, child? What can you do, when the others have failed?' 'I can but try.' 'Try, in Heaven's name. Try, my dear. If you find out, you shall be burned for a witch.' 'No. If I find out, you shall be present at my wedding. You were to have given me away. But now--now--Athelstan shall give me away, and you will be there to see. And it will be a tearful wedding'--the tears came into her own eyes just to illustrate the remark--'because everyone will be so ashamed of the wicked things they have said. Sir Samuel will remain on his knees the whole service, and Checkley will be fain to get under the seat.--Good-bye, Mr. Dering. I am a Prophetess. I can foretell. You shall hear in a very few days all about Edmund Gray.' She ran away without any further explanation. Mr. Dering shook his head and smiled. He did not believe in contemporary Prophecy. That young people should place their own affairs--their love-makings and weddings--before the affairs of their elders, was not surprising. For himself, as he sometimes remembered--and always when this girl, with her pretty ways and soft voice, was with him--her visit had cheered him. He opened his letters and went on with the day's work.