"I beg your pardon," Joyce went on, "but will you kindly tell me all you know of this matter? I know Mr. Creswell, and I knew this boy well. Are you sure of the fact of his death?" The paleness of Walter's face, the intensity of his tone, held Lady Caroline's attention fixed upon him. How handsome he was! and the man could evidently feel too! How nice it would be to make him feel, to see the face pale, and to hear the voice deepen, like that, for her! It would be quite _new_. She had any amount of flirtation always at hand, whenever she chose to summon its aid in passing the time; but feeling did not come at call, and she had never had much of _that_ given her. These were the thoughts of only a moment, flashing through her mind before Mr. Gould had time to answer Joyce's appeal. "I am sorry I mentioned the fact at so inappropriate a time," said Mr. Gould, "but still more sorry that there is no doubt whatever of its truth. Indeed, I think I can show you the letter." Mr. Gould wore a dress-coat, of course, but he could not have dined comfortably if he had not transferred a mass of papers from his morning-coat to its pockets. This mass he extricated with some difficulty, and selecting one, methodically indorsed with the date of its receipt, from the number, he handed it to Walter. Lady Hetherington was naturally shocked at the infringement of the _bien-séances_ caused by this unfortunate incident, and was glancing from Mr. Gould to Mr. Joyce--from one element of the "mixture" in the assembled society to the other, with no pleasant expression of countenance--when Lady Caroline came to the rescue, with gracefulness, deftness, lightness all her own, and by starting an easy unembarrassed conversation with the gentleman opposite to her, in which she skilfully included her immediate neighbours, she dissipated all the restraints which had temporarily fallen upon the party. Something interesting to the elevated minds of the party, something different from the unpleasantness of a boy being killed whom nobody knew anything about, at a place which did not belong to anybody,--and the character of the dinner-party, momentarily threatened, was triumphantly retrieved. Walter saw that the letter which Mr. Gould handed him was in Marian's writing. It contained an announcement of the calamity which had occurred, and an intimation that Mr. Creswell could not attend to any matters of business at present. That was all. Walter read the brief letter with sincere concern, commiseration for the childless rich man, and also with the thrill, half of curiosity, half of painless jealousy, with which one regards the familiar and beloved handwriting, when addressed, however formally, to another. He returned the letter to Mr. Gould, with a simple expression of thanks, and sat silent. No one noticed him. Every one had forgotten the dismal occurrence about somebody whom nobody knew, down in some place that did not belong to anybody. He had time to think unquestioned.