She continued to look at me thoughtfully as I stammered out my excuses, and then said:  “I wasn’t going to.  I was only thinking that poverty has its compensations.  You are all so very good to us; and, for my part, I should accept Doctor Thorndyke’s generous offer most gratefully, and thank him for making it so easy for us.”

“Very well, my dear,” said Mr. Bellingham; “we will enjoy the sweets of poverty, as you say—­we have sampled the other kind of thing pretty freely—­and do ourselves the pleasure of accepting a great kindness, most delicately offered.”

“Thank you,” said Thorndyke.  “You have justified my faith in you, Miss Bellingham, and in the power of Doctor Berkeley’s salt.  I understand that you place your affairs in my hands?”

“Entirely and thankfully,” replied Mr. Bellingham.  “Whatever you think best to be done we agree to beforehand.”

“Then,” said I, “let us drink success to the Cause.  Port, if you please, Miss Bellingham; the vintage is not recorded, but it is quite wholesome, and a suitable medium for the sodium chloride of friendship.”  I filled her glass, and, when the bottle had made its circuit, we stood up and solemnly pledged the new alliance.

“There is just one thing that I would say before we dismiss the subject for the present,” said Thorndyke.  “It is a good thing to keep one’s own counsel.  When you get formal notice from Mr. Hurst’s solicitors that proceedings are being commenced, you may refer them to Mr. Marchmont of Gray’s Inn, who will nominally act for you.  He will actually have nothing to do, but we must preserve the fiction that I am instructed by a solicitor.  Meanwhile, and until the case goes into Court, I think it very necessary that neither Mr. Jellicoe nor anyone else should know that I am to be connected with it.  We must keep the other side in the dark, if we can.”

“We will be as secret as the grave,” said Mr. Bellingham; “and, as a matter of fact, it will be quite easy, since it happens, by a curious coincidence, that I am already acquainted with Mr. Marchmont.  He acted for Stephen Blackmore, you remember, in that case that you unravelled so wonderfully.  I knew the Blackmores.”

“Did you?” said Thorndyke.  “What a small world it is!  And what a remarkable affair that was!  The intricacies and cross-issues made it quite absorbingly interesting; and it is noteworthy for me in another respect, for it was one of the first cases in which I was associated with Doctor Jervis.”

“Yes, and a mighty useful associate I was,” remarked Jervis, “though I did pick up one or two facts by accident.  And, by the way, the Blackmore case had certain points in common with your case, Mr. Bellingham.  There was a disappearance and a disputed will, and the man who vanished was a scholar and an antiquarian.”

“Cases in our specialty are apt to have certain general resemblances,” said Thorndyke; and as he spoke he directed a keen glance at his junior, the significance of which I partly understood when he abruptly changed the subject.