"After all I believe I should be safer and happier at Fairvale Park," she says, after a moment. "I have a feeling of dread upon me here. I am growing nervous, perhaps, but I am actually afraid of Leslie Noble. I seem to be haunted by his baleful presence. Yesterday evening when I went for a short walk, I fancied my footsteps were dogged by a man, though I could not make out his identity through my thick veil. But I was frightened homeward very fast by an apprehension that it was Mr. Noble. I should breathe more easily out of London. Could I persuade you, Lady Clive and Sir Harry, to forego the delights of the season, and come down to the country with me?" Sir Harry gives his wife a quick telegraphic signal of affirmation, and she assents smilingly. "I am sure I shall be delighted," she declares. "And Sir Harry is usually of the same mind as I am. It must be perfectly lovely now down at Fairvale. And the children would be delighted, I know." "I am all the more willing to accept Lady Vera's invitation to Fairvale, because I think it necessary that she should examine her father's letters and papers if he has left any," declares Sir Harry, diffidently. "If he has left any confession bearing on the subject of her supposed death and burial, it is most important that she should be in possession of it." "Why?" asks the young countess, looking at him with a slightly startled air. "For this reason," he answers. "In the face of your enemies' confident assertion of Vera Noble's death and burial, and your own denial of it, matters have assumed a strange aspect! Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter declare you to be an impostor whom the Earl of Fairvale has palmed off as his child. There are some who could very easily be brought to believe that story." "Whom?" Lady Vera asks, wonderingly. "The person who would be most benefited if such a charge could be proven true--the next heir to the title and estates of Fairvale," Sir Harry answers, gravely. "Oh, dear!" cries Lady Clive, anxiously, and Vera says, with paling lips: "You do not mean that--that----" "I ought to tell you, Lady Vera, what I have heard," he answers, interrupting her incoherent question. "Shall I do so?" "Yes, pray do," she answers. "Briefly, then, Raleigh Gilmore, the next heir, has come up to London, summoned doubtless by the vindictive Clevelands, and has been interviewing some eminent lawyers. Seeing that he has lived for ten years or more on his small estate in the country without ever setting foot in London, this present move on his part has a suspicious look. You may apprehend a suit against you at any time, so it behooves you to muster all the evidence you can on this weak point in your history."