Frowning in a perplexed fashion, he pushed the manuscript aside and twiddled the blue pencil between his fingers. The customs-barrier of which Josiah Cholderton was about to speak had no power to interest him. The story which he had read interested him a good deal; it was an odd little bit of human history, a disastrous turn of human fortunes. Besides, Mr Neeld knew his London. He shook his head at the Journal reprovingly, rose from his chair, went to his book-case, and took down a Peerage. A reminiscence was running in his head. He turned to the letter T (Ah, those hollowly discreet, painfully indiscreet initials of Josiah Cholderton's! Mysteries perhaps in Baxton, Yorks, but none in Pall Mall!) and searched the pages. This was the entry at which his finger stopped--or rather part of the entry, for the volume had more to say on the family than it is needful either to believe or to repeat:-- "Tristram of Blent--Adelaide Louisa Aimée, in her own right Baroness--23rd in descent, the barony descending to heirs general. Born 17th December 1853. Married first Sir Randolph Edge, Bart.--no issue. Secondly, Captain Henry Vincent Fitzhubert (late Scots Guards), died 1877. Issue--one son (and heir) Hon. Henry Austen Fitzhubert Tristram, born 20th July 1875. The name of Tristram was assumed in lieu of Fitzhubert by Royal Licence 1884. Seat--Blent Hall, Devon----" Here Mr Neeld laid down the book. He had seen what he wanted, and had no further concern with the ancestry, the ramifications, the abodes or possessions of the Tristrams of Blent. To him who knew, the entry itself was expressive in what it said and in what it omitted; read in conjunction with Josiah Cholderton's Journal it was yet more eloquent. By itself it hinted a scandal--else why no dates for the marriages? With the Journal it said something more. For the 20th is not "early in July." Yet Mr Neeld had never heard--! He shut the book hastily and put it back on the shelf. Returning to his desk, he took up the blue pencil. But on second thoughts this instrument did not content him. Scissors were to his hand; with them he carefully cut out from the manuscript the whole account of Mr Cholderton's visit to Heidelberg (he would run no risks, and there was nothing important in it), dated it, marked it with the page to which it belonged in the Journal, and locked it away in a drawer. He felt resentful toward his dead friend Josiah Cholderton. If there be a safe pastime, one warranted to lead a man into no trouble and to entangle him in no scandals, it would seem to lie in editing the Journal of a Member of Parliament, a Commercial Delegate, an Inventor of the Hygroxeric Method of Dressing Wool. Josiah Cholderton had--not quite for the first time--played him false. But never so badly as this before! "Good gracious me!" he muttered. "The thing is nothing more nor less than an imputation on the legitimacy of the son and heir!"