He handed Peter a folded-up piece of notepaper.  Opening it, Peter read, scrawled unsteadily in pencil, “Come and see me to-morrow morning.  I shall be alone.”  E.P.U.

“He followed me to the garden door as I went away,” continued Livio, “and gave it me secretly.  I fancy he did not mean his companions to know.  You will go?”

Peter smiled, and Livio looked momentarily embarrassed.

“Oh, you know, it came open in my hand; and understanding the language so well, it leaped to my eyes.  I knew you would not mind.  You will go and see this milord?  He is a milord, for I heard the waiter address him.”

“Yes,” said Peter.  “I will go and see him.”

An hour later he was climbing the white road again in the morning sunshine.

Asking at the hotel for Lord Evelyn Urquhart, he was taken through the garden to a wistaria-hung summer-house.  The porter indicated it to him and departed, and Peter, through the purple veils, saw Lord Evelyn reclining in a long cane chair, smoking the eternal cigarette and reading a French novel.

He looked up as Peter’s shadow fell between him and the sun, and dropped the yellow book with a slight start.  For a moment neither of them spoke; they looked at each other in silence, the pale, shabby, dusty youth with his vivid eyes; the frail, foppish, middle-aged, worn-out man, with his pale face twitching a little and his near-sighted eyes screwed up, as if he was startled, or dazzled, or trying hard to see something.

The next moment Lord Evelyn put out a slim, fine hand.

“How are you, Peter Margerison?  Sit down and talk to me.”

Peter sat down in the chair beside him.

Lord Evelyn said, “I’m quite alone this morning.  Denis and Lucy have motored to Genoa.  I join them there this afternoon....  You didn’t know last night that I saw you.”

“No,” said Peter.  “I believed that none of you had seen me.  I didn’t want you to; so I came away.”

Lord Evelyn nodded.  “Quite so; quite so.  I understood that.  And I didn’t mention you to the others.  Indeed, I didn’t mean to take any notice of you at all; but at the end I changed my mind, and sent for you to come.  I believe I’m right in thinking that your wish is to keep out of the way of our family.”

“Yes,” said Peter.

“You’re right.  You’ve been very right indeed.  There’s nothing else you could have done, all this time.”  Peter glanced at him quickly, to see what he knew, and saw.

Lord Evelyn saw the questioning glance.

“Oh, yes, yes, boy.  Of course, I knew about you and Lucy.  I’m not such a blind fool as I’ve sometimes been thought in the past—­eh, Peter Margerison?  I always knew you cared for Lucy; and I knew she cared for you.  And I knew when she and you all but went off together.  I asked Lucy; I can read the child’s eyes better than books, you see.  I read it, and I asked her, and she admitted it.”