"I cannot think what you have done for clothes, James," said Mrs. Chattaway. "I have done very well," he retorted. "Bought what I wanted." But it was not upon the score of his wardrobe, or what had kept him so long, that Miss Diana Trevlyn required Chattaway. She had been waiting since the first morning of his absence, for information on a certain point, and now demanded it in a peremptory manner. "Chattaway," she began, when the rest had dispersed, and she waited with him, "I have had a strange communication made to me. In that past time--carry your thoughts back to it, if you please--when there came to this house the news of Rupert Trevlyn's birth and his mother's death--do you remember it?" "Yes, I do," said Mr. Chattaway. "What should hinder me?" "The tidings were conveyed by letter. Two letters came, the second a day after the first." "Well?" returned Chattaway, believing the theme, in some shape or other, was to haunt him for ever. "What of the letters?" "In that last letter, which must have been a heavy one, there was a communication enclosed for me." "I don't remember it," said Mr. Chattaway. "It was no doubt there. A document written at the request of Mrs. Trevlyn; appointing me guardian to the two children. What did you do with it?" "I?" returned Chattaway, speaking with apparent surprise, and looking full at Miss Diana with an unmoved face. "I did nothing with it. I don't know anything about it." "You must have taken it out and suppressed it," observed Miss Diana. "I never saw it or heard of it," obstinately persisted Chattaway. "Why should I? You might have been their appointed guardian, and welcome, for me: you have chiefly acted as guardian. I tell you, Diana, I neither saw nor heard of it: you need not look so suspiciously at me." "Is he telling the truth?" thought Miss Diana, and her keen eyes were not lifted from Mr. Chattaway's face. But that gentleman was remarkably inscrutable, and never appeared more so than at this moment. "If he did _not_ do anything with it," continued Miss Diana in her train of thought, "what could have become of the thing? Where can it be?" CHAPTER XXX MR. CHATTAWAY COMES TO GRIEF