“Why do you ask that?” inquired Sir Henry, “when she herself admitted that she had been at the safe?”

“Because——­” and the other hesitated.  “Well, for several reasons.  The story of your quarrel with mademoiselle has leaked out.”

“The Whispers—­eh, Goslin?” laughed the old man in defiance.  “Let the people believe what they will.  My daughter shall never return to Glencardine—­never!”

As he had been speaking the door had opened, and James Flockart stood upon the threshold.  He had overheard the blind man’s words, and as he came forward he smiled, more in satisfaction than in greeting.

CHAPTER XXIX

CONTAINS A FURTHER MYSTERY

“My dear Edgar, when I met you in the Devonshire Club last night I could scarcely believe my own eyes.  Fancy you turning up again!”

“Yes, strange, isn’t it, how two men may drift apart for years, and then suddenly meet in a club, as we have done, Murie?”

“Being with those fellows who were anxious to go along and see the show at the Empire last night, I had no opportunity of having a chat with you, my dear old chap.  That’s why I asked you to look in.”

The two men were seated in Walter’s dingy chambers on the second floor in Fig-Tree Court, Temple.  The room was an old and rather frowsy one, with shabby leather furniture from which the stuffing protruded, panelled walls, a carpet almost threadbare, and a formidable array of calf-bound volumes in the cases lining one wall.  The place was heavy with tobacco-smoke as the pair, reclining in easy-chairs, were in the full enjoyment of very excellent cigars.

Walter’s visitor was a tall, dark man, some six or seven years his senior, a rather spare, lantern-jawed young fellow, whose dark-grey clothes were of unmistakable foreign cut; and whose moustache was carefully trained to an upward trend.  No second glance was required to decide that Edgar Hamilton was a person who, having lived a long time on the Continent, had acquired the cosmopolitan manner both in gesture and in dress.

“Well,” exclaimed Murie at last, blowing a cloud of smoke from his lips, “since we parted at Oxford I’ve been called to the Bar, as you see.  As for practice—­well, I haven’t any.  The gov’nor wants me to go in for politics, so I’m trying to please him by getting my hand in.  I make an odd speech or two sometimes in out-of-the-world villages, and I hope, one day, to find myself the adopted candidate for some borough or other.  Last year I was sent round the world by my fond parents in order to obtain a broader view of life.  Is it not Tacitus who says, ’Sua cuique vita obscura est’?”

“Yes, my dear fellow,” replied Hamilton, stretching himself lazily in his chair.  “And surely we can say with Martial, ’Non est vivere, sed valere vita’—­I am well, therefore I am alive!  Mine has been a rather curious career up to the present.  I only once heard of you after Oxford—­through Arthur Price, who was, you’ll remember, at Balliol.  He wrote that he’d spoken one night to you when at supper at the Savoy.  You had a bevy of beauties with you, he said.”