Clementina sat in the vestibule and fanned herself with the telegram. It was from Marseilles and had been telegraphed on from London. It ran: “Doctors say I am dying. Come at once here Hôtel Louvre. Matter of life and death. Am wiring Quixtus also. For Heaven’s sake both come.—Will Hammersley.” It was a shock. Hammersley’s letter of a few weeks ago had prepared her for his indefinite advent; but the thought of death had not come to her. Will Hammersley was dying, apparently alone, in an hotel at Marseilles; dying, too, in an atmosphere of mystery, for he must see her, and Quixtus too, before he died. The message was urgent, the appeal imperative. “Oh, Clementina, I hope it’s not bad news,” cried Etta. Clementina handed the telegram to Tommy. “It’s from the sick man of Shanghai who pined for the English lanes.” “Poor chap,” said Tommy very gently. “Poor chap! I remember him well. A fine upstanding fellow, one of the best. Once he gave me a cricket-bat.” The artist in him shivered. “It’s awful to think of a man like that dying. What are you going to do?” “What do you think?” “Take the night train to Marseilles,” replied Tommy. “Then why did you ask?” said Clementina. “But what shall we do?” cried Etta. “Oh, you and Tommy can stay here till I come back.” Etta gasped and blushed crimson. “That would be very nice—but—but—I don’t think dad would quite like it.” “Oh Lord!” cried Clementina, “I was forgetting those confounded conventions. They do complicate life so. And I suppose I can’t send you away with Tommy in the motor either. And now I come to think of it, I can’t go away to-night and leave you two to travel together to London to-morrow. What on earth are women put in the world for, especially young ones? They’re more worry than they’re worth. And if I left Tommy here and took you with me to Marseilles, you’d be as handy to travel with, in the circumstances, as a wedding-cake. I don’t know what to do with you.” Etta suggested that the Jacksons—the friends whom she had visited the previous day—might take her in till Clementina came back. Indeed, they had invited her to stay with them. “Go and telephone them at once,” said Clementina. “You’ll have Uncle Ephraim as a travelling companion,” Tommy remarked as Etta was leaving them. Clementina rubbed a distracted brow, not to the well-being of her front hair. “Lord save us! He’ll be worse than Etta.” “Poor dear Clementina,” he said, and turned away to administer help and counsel to his beloved in the complicated matter of the telephone.