Could Lydia Moreton furnish any information?  If so, I might find this girl whose photograph had aroused the irate jealousy of the mysterious unknown.

The ten o’clock Edinburgh express from King’s Cross next morning took me up to Doncaster, and hiring a musty old fly at the station, I drove three miles out of the town on the Rotherham Road, finding Whiston Grange to be a fine old Elizabethan mansion in the center of a great park, with tall old twisted chimneys, and beautifully-kept gardens.

When I descended at the door and rang, the footman was not aware whether Miss Lydia was in.  He looked at me somewhat suspiciously, I thought, until I gave my card and impressed upon him meaningly that I had come from London purposely to see his young mistress upon a very important matter.

“Tell her,” I said, “that I wish to see her regarding her friend, Miss Elma Heath.”

“Miss Elma ’Eath,” repeated the man.  “Very well, sir.  Will you walk this way?”

And then I followed him across the big old oak-paneled hall, filled with trophies of the chase and arms of the civil wars, into a small paneled room on the left, the deep-set window with its diamond panes giving out upon the old bowling-green and the flower-garden beyond.

Presently the door opened, and a tall dark-haired girl in white entered with an enquiring expression upon her face as she halted and bowed to me.

“Miss Lydia Moreton, I believe?” I commenced, and as she replied in the affirmative I went on:  “I have first to apologize for coming to you, but Miss Sotheby, the principal of the school at Chichester, referred me to you for information as to the present whereabouts of Miss Elma Heath, who, I believe, was one of your most intimate friends at school.”  And I added a lie, saying:  “I am trying, on behalf of an aunt of hers, to discover her.”

“Well,” responded the girl, “I have had only one or two letters.  She’s in her uncle’s hands, I believe, and he won’t let her write, poor girl.  She dreaded leaving us.”

“Why?”

“Ah! she would never say.  She had some deep-rooted terror of her uncle, Baron Oberg, who lived in St. Petersburg, and who came over at long intervals to see her.  But possibly you know the whole story?”

“I know nothing,” I cried eagerly.  “You will be furthering her interests, as well as doing me a great personal favor, if you will tell me what you know.”

“It is very little,” she answered, leaning back against the edge of the table and regarding me seriously.  “Poor Elma!  Her people treated her very badly indeed.  They sent her no money, and allowed her no holidays, and yet she was the sweetest-tempered and most patient girl in the whole school.”

“Well—­and the story regarding her?”

“It was supposed that her people at Durham did not exist,” she explained.  “Elma had evidently lived a greater part of her life abroad, for she could speak French and Italian better than the professor himself, and therefore always won the prizes.  The class revolted, and then she did not compete any more.  Yet she never told us of where she had lived when a child.  She came from Durham, she said—­that was all.”