So she cleared away some of her needlework, stirred the fire, which was dropping hollow and dull, and looked up pleasantly to the opening door.  But it was not the girls:  it was a man’s foot and a man’s voice.

“Any person of the name of Leaf living here?  I wish to see her, on business.”

At another time she would have laughed at the manner and words, as if it were impossible so great a gentleman as Mr. Ascott could want to see so small a person as the “person of the name of Leaf,” except on business.  But now she was startled by his appearance at all.  She sprang up only able to articulate “My sister—­”

“Don’t be frightened; your sisters are quite well.  I called at No. 15 an hour ago.”

“You saw them?”

“No; I thought it unadvisable, under the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

“I will explain, if you will allow me to sit down; bah!  I’ve brought in sticking to me a straw out of that confounded shaky old cab.  One ought never to be so stupid as to go any where except in one’s own carriage.  This is rather a small room, Miss Hilary.”

He eyed it curiously round; and, lastly, with his most acute look he eyed herself, as if he wished to find out something from her manner, before going into further explanations.

But she stood before him a little uneasy, and yet not very much so.  The utmost she expected was some quarrel with her sister Selina; perhaps the breaking off of the match, which would not have broken Hilary’s heart at all events.

“So you have really no idea what I’m come about!”

“Not the slightest.”

“Well!” said Peter Ascott.  “I hardly thought it; but when one has been taken in as I have been, and this isn’t the first time by your family—­”

“Mr. Ascott! will you explain yourself?”

“I will, ma’am.  It’s a very unpleasant business I come about; any other gentleman but me would have come with a police officer at his back.  Look here, Miss Hilary Leaf—­did you ever set eyes on this before?”

He took out his check book, turned deliberately over the small memorandum halves of the page, till he came to one in particular, then hunted in his pocket book for something.

“My banker sent in to-day my canceled checks, which I don’t usually go over oftener than three months; he knew that, the scamp.”

Hilary looked up.

“Your nephew, to be sure.  See!”

He spread before her a check, the very one she had watched him write seven days before, made payable to “Ascott Leaf, or bearer,” and signed with the bold, peculiar signature.  “Peter Ascott.”  Only instead of being a check for twenty pounds it was for seventy.

Instantly the whole truth flashed upon Hilary:  Ascott’s remark about how easily the T could be made into an S, and what a “good joke” it would be; his long absence that night; his strange manner:  his refusal to let her see the check again; all was clear as daylight.