“What can one think of a man,” he answered, “who goes about like an animated mummy? I have done my best; I talked to him for nearly half an hour at a stretch today when I took him to the club for lunch. He is the incarnation of indifference. He won’t listen to politics; women, or tales about them, at any rate, seem to bore him to extinction; he drinks only as a matter of form, and he won’t talk finance. By the bye, Ruth, I wish you could get him to give you a tip. I scarcely see how we are going to get through the season unless something turns up.” “Is it as bad as that?” she asked. “Worse!” her husband answered gloomily. “We’ve been living on our capital for years. Every acre of Queen’s Norton is mortgaged, and I’m shot if I can see how we’re going to pay the interest.” She sighed a little wearily. “Do you think that it would be wise?” she asked. “Let me tell you something, Lumley. I have only known what fear was once in my life. I am afraid now. I am afraid of Wingrave. I have a fancy that he does not mean any good to us.” Barrington frowned and threw his cigarette into the fire with a little jerk. “Nonsense!” he exclaimed. “The man’s not quite so bad as that. We’ve been useful to him. We’ve done exactly what he asked. The other matter’s dead and buried. We don’t want his money, but it is perfectly easy for him to help us make a little.” She looked up at him quietly. “I think, Lumley, that it is dangerous!” she said. “Then you’re not the clever woman I take you for,” he answered, turning to leave the room. “Just as you please. Only it will be that or the bankruptcy court before long!” Lady Ruth lay quite still, looking into the fire. When her maid came, she moved on tiptoe for it seemed to her that her mistress slept. But Lady Ruth was wide awake though the thoughts which were flitting through her brain had, perhaps, some kinship to the land of dreams. JULIET ASKS QUESTIONS “Any place,” the girl exclaimed as she entered, “more unlike a solicitor’s office, I never saw! Flowers outside and flowers on your desk, Mr. Pengarth! Don’t you have to apologize to your clients for your surroundings? There’s absolutely nothing, except the brass plate outside, to show that this isn’t an old-fashioned farmhouse, stuck down in the middle of a village. Fuchsias in the window sill, too!” He placed a chair for her, and laid down the deed which he had been examining, with a little sigh of relief. It really was very hard work pretending to be busy. “You see, Miss Juliet,” he explained with twinkling eyes, “my clients are all country folk, and it makes them feel more at home to find a lawyer’s office not very different from their own parlor.” She nodded. “What would the great man say?” she inquired, pointing to the rows of black tin boxes which lined the walls.