The man tore a leaf from a notebook and handed Zoe a pencil. Using the book as a pad, she, by the light of the near-side lamp, wrote: "Your meeting at The Cedars known to Mr. Alden. Don't go." "It is such a tiny piece of paper," she said. "He--they may not see it." "I believe I've got an envelope somewhere, miss. It's got the company's name and address printed on it, and it won't be extra clean, but----" "Oh, thank you! If you could find it----" It was found, and proved to be even more dirty than the man's words had indicated. Zoe enclosed the note, wetted a finger of her glove, and stuck down the lapel. "Will you please put it under the door?" "Yes, miss. Shan't be a minute." He was absent but a few moments. "Back to Charing Cross Station," directed Zoe, and got into the cab again. She had done her best. But, throughout the whole of the journey to the Strand, her mind was occupied with dire possibilities. It almost alarmed her, this too keen interest which she found herself taking in the fortunes of Severac Bablon. At Charing Cross the taxi-man received a sovereign. It was more than double his fare. He knew, then, that his professional instincts had not misled him, but that he had been driving an American millionairess. In the foyer of the Astoria, Mary Evershed was waiting, with Mrs. Wellington Lacey in stately attendance. Mary was simply radiant. She sprang forward to meet Zoe, both hands outsretched. "Wherever have you been?" she cried. "Picture show!" said Zoe, with composed mendacity, glancing at the aristocratic chaperon. "I could not possibly wait until the morning," Mary ran on, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "I had to run along here straight from horrid, stuffy Downing Street to tell you. Dick has inherited a fortune." "What!" said Zoe, and grasped both her friend's hands. "Inherited a fortune!" "Well--not quite a fortune, perhaps--five thousand pounds." And John Jacob Oppner's daughter, a real chum to the core, never even smiled. For she knew what five thousand pounds meant to these two, knew that it meant more than five _hundred_ thousands meant to her; since it meant the difference between union and parting, between love and loss, meant that Sir Richard Haredale could now shake off the fetters that bound him, and look the world in the face. "Oh, Mary," she said, and her pretty eyes were quite tearful. "How very, very glad I am! Isn't it just great! It sounds almost too good to be true! Come right upstairs and tell me all about it!" In Zoe's cosy room the story was told, not a romantic one in its essentials, but romantic enough in its potential sequel. A remote aunt was the benefactress; and her death, news of which had been communicated to Sir Richard that evening, had enriched him by five thousand pounds and served to acquaint him, at its termination, with the existence of a relation whom he had never met and rarely heard of.