And then, one day late in the fall, Lord had received a letter from her saying that she was going away as a sort of maid or companion to an old lady, a Mrs. Rutherford, who had a cottage in Fennimore Park. She told him that she hoped, before very long, to be able to send the money he had loaned her on her father's watch and an old seal ring. (Lord had been worried for fear Mr. Clancy might think he had exacted this security. Peter assured him that he readily understood that it must have been forced upon him.) "And did she send for them?" Peter had asked with interest. It transpired that she had and that Lord had returned the watch and ring in Mrs. Rutherford's care, to the Holland House in New York. And that was the last he had ever heard of Anne Curwood. He had made a pilgrimage to Fennimore Park the next summer, only to find that Mrs. Rutherford had gone abroad and that no one knew anything about Anne. The following year he succeeded in seeing Mrs. Rutherford, who was obviously, from Lord's tone, an awe-inspiring lady. She had dimly remembered that she had once had a maid named Anne Curwood, but the young woman was no longer in her employ and she could, unfortunately, give Mr. Lord no address. Peter was going over all this in his mind as he bathed and dressed. He was in a somewhat despondent mood for one of his sanguine temperament, and rather wished he had not humoured Walter Lord's absurd request that he should sit for his photograph before he left in the morning. To be sure, he had refused once, on the ground that his train left at nine-thirty, but when he saw how disappointed Lord was not to have this souvenir of what was, evidently, an event in the old man's life, he hastily relented, and as a result, he was up and dressed at seven o'clock. He had heard his host pottering about the kitchen before he was up, and when he presently descended the old carpeted front stair, he found an ample and savoury breakfast awaiting him. It was rapidly, and by Walter Lord gleefully, dispatched. "The light is great this morning," the old enthusiast said, as he led the way up the back stairs, "and I'm going to make a fine picture of you, Mr. Clancy. It's awfully good of you to be willing to humour an old codger like me. I hope you won't mind the gallery being a bit dusty," he added, opening a gray painted door. "I don't have much incentive, these days, to keep it spick and span, and I never have allowed Miranda to tidy up here since the day she carefully dusted six wet negatives." He laughed over his shoulder as he went into a closet for his plate holders.