Her sister scrutinised her attentively, but could read nothing in her face to help her to any conclusion. She longed to ask questions, but restrained her curiosity in the hope that Esme would confide in her when a propitious moment offered. She made opportunities somewhat too obviously, but Esme did not take advantage of them. She did not speak of her letter. The letters came regularly after that, once a week; and Rose's unsatisfied curiosity grew enormously. There was something unnatural in the girl's reticence. She began to entertain doubts of Paul Hallam. It entered her mind to seek information from Sinclair, but loyalty to her sister restrained her from doing that. Esme, she supposed, answered these weekly epistles; but she never saw her write letters; whatever she wrote she posted herself. "Who's Esme's correspondent?" Jim asked on one occasion when the weekly letter attracted his notice. "These letters are always coming to the house." "I don't know," his wife answered. "And you'd better not ask her." "D'you mean she never tells you?" he asked, amazed. "She doesn't tell me anything. But I believe they come from a man she met at the Zuurberg." "That place seems to be a kind of matrimonial agency," Jim grinned. "I thought Sinclair was coming into the family. You see if you can't find out something about this fellow. Sinclair's all right, and he means business. Pity if this is going to queer his pitch." "It's Esme's affair," Rose replied, experiencing a distinct disinclination to follow his counsel. "When there is anything for me to know I expect she will tell me." "I never knew before that you were so blooming discreet," he rejoined; and turned, red in the face but unabashed, to confront his sister-in-law, who entered by the open door and met them in the tiny hall. He gave her the letter. "I was just asking Rose who your correspondent was," he said, with overdone ease of manner. "She pretends she doesn't know." "She does not know," Esme answered coolly, and took the letter from his hand and glanced at it casually. "Well, but, see here," he returned, nettled but intent on information. "We are interested--naturally." "How can you be interested in some one you have never met?" she said, and went on up the steep narrow stairs, carrying her letter with her. "I'm blowed!" her brother-in-law ejaculated. Rose laughed annoyingly. "You made a hash of that," she said. "She won't say anything now." "Then let her keep her mouth shut," he said rudely, and went into the sitting-room in a ruffled state of mind. Book 2--CHAPTER FOURTEEN.