trip to Scotland has impaired neither your good looks nor your self-command.’  Wasn’t it cruel of him?—­but then, poor fellow! he had been badly used, I admit that.  Poor young fellow! he never did marry; and I don’t believe he ever forgot me to his dying day.  Many a time I’d like to have told him all about it, and how there was no use in my marrying him if I liked another man better; but though we met sometimes, and especially when he came down about the Reform Bill time—­and I do believe I made a red-hot radical of him—­he was always very proud, and I hadn’t the heart to go back on the old story.  But I’ll tell you what your grandfather did for him:  he got him returned at the very next election, and he on the other side, too; and after a bit a man begins to think more about getting a seat in Parliament than about courting an empty-headed girl.  I have met this Mr. Roscorla, haven’t I?”

“Of course you have.”

“A good-looking man rather, with a fresh complexion and gray hair?”

“I don’t know what you mean by good looks,” said Trelyon shortly.  “I shouldn’t think people would call him an Adonis.  But there’s no accounting for tastes.”

“Perhaps I may have been mistaken,” the old lady said, “but there was a gentleman at Plymouth Station who seemed to be something like what I can recall of Mr. Roscorla:  you didn’t see him, I suppose?”

“At Plymouth Station, grandmother?” the young man said, becoming rather uneasy.

“Yes.  He got into the train just as we came up.  A neatly-dressed man, gray hair and a healthy-looking face.  I must have seen him somewhere about here before.”

“Roscorla is in Jamaica,” said Trelyon positively.

Just at this moment the train slowed into Launceston Station, and the people began to get out on the platform.

“That is the man I mean,” said the old lady.

Trelyon turned and stared.  There, sure enough, was Mr. Roscorla, looking not one whit different from the precise, elderly, fresh-colored gentleman who had left Cornwall some seven months before.

“Good Lord, Harry!” said the old lady nervously, looking at her grandson’s face, “don’t have a fight here.”

The next second Mr. Roscorla wheeled round, anxious about some luggage, and now it was his turn to stare in astonishment and anger—­anger, because he had been told that Harry Trelyon never came near Cornwall, and his first sudden suspicion was that he had been deceived.  All this had happened in a minute.  Trelyon was the first to regain his self-command.  He walked deliberately forward, held out his hand, and said, “Hillo, Roscorla! back in England again?  I didn’t know you were coming.”

“No,” said Mr. Roscorla, with his face grown just a trifle grayer—­“no, I suppose not.”