“Severino,” said Venn, with a play-actor’s pomp, “let me introduce you to Charles Langholm, the celebrated novelist—­’whom not to know is to argue yourself unknown.’”

“Which is the champion non sequitur of literature,” added Langholm, with literary arrogance, as he took the lad’s hand cordially in his own, only to release it hurriedly before he crushed such slender fingers to their hurt.

“Mr. Langholm,” pursued Venn, “is the hero of that paragraph”—­Langholm kicked him under the table—­“that—­that paragraph about his last book, you know.  Severino, Langholm, is the best pianist we have had in the club since I have been a member, and you will say the same yourself in another minute.  He always plays to us when he drops in to dine, and you may think yourself lucky that he has dropped in to-night.”

“But where does the coincidence come in?” asked Langholm, as the young fellow returned to the piano with a rather sad shake of the head.

“What!” cried Venn, below his breath; “do you mean to say you are a friend of Mrs. Minchin’s, or whatever her name is now, and that you never heard of Severino?”

“No,” replied Langholm, his heart in an instantaneous flutter.  “Who is he?”

“The man she wanted to nurse the night her husband was murdered—­the cause of the final row between them!  His name was kept out of the papers, but that’s the man.”

Langholm sat back in his chair.  To have spent a summer’s day in stolid search for traces of this man, only to be introduced to the man himself by purest chance in the evening!  It was, indeed, difficult to believe; nor was persuasion on the point followed by the proper degree of gratitude in Langholm for a transcendent stroke of fortune.  In fact, he almost resented his luck; he would so much rather have stood indebted to his skill.  And there were other causes for disappointment, as in an instant there were things more incredible to Langholm than the everyday coincidence of a chance meeting with the one person whom one desires to meet.

“So that’s the man!” he echoed, in a tone that might have told his companion something, only the fingers which Langholm had feared to crush had already fallen upon the keys, with the strong, tender, unerring touch of a master, and the impressionable player was swaying with enthusiasm on his stool.

“And can’t he play?” whispered Valentine Venn, as though it were the man’s playing alone that they were discussing.

Yet even the preoccupied novelist had to listen and nod, and then listen again, before replying.

“He can,” said Langholm at length.  “But why was it that they took such pains to keep his name out of the case?”

“They didn’t.  It would have done no good to drag him in.  The poor devil was at death’s door at the time of the murder.”

“But is that a fact?”

Venn opened his eyes.

“Supposing,” continued Langholm, speaking the thing that was not in his mind with the deplorable facility of the professional story-teller—­“supposing that illness had been a sham, and they had really meant to elope under cover of it!”