Lightmark recovered himself quickly, shrugging his shoulders as soon as the other was out of earshot.  He glanced at his wife, who was following Oswyn with her eyes; he did not dare to ask, or even to think, what she might have heard.

“The man’s mad,” he said lightly, “madder than ever!”

CHAPTER XXXII

It was Margot who gave him the letter:  Oswyn remembered that afterwards with a kind of superstition.  She came to meet him, wearing an air of immense importance, when his quick step fell upon the bare wooden stairway which led to his rooms.

“There’s a letter for you,” she said, nodding impressively, “a big letter, with a seal on it; and Mrs. Thomas had to write something on a piece of green paper before the postman would give it to her.”

Then she followed him into the twilight of the attic which was his studio, and watched him gravely while he lighted the gas and, in deference to her curiosity, broke the seal.

The envelope contained a letter, and a considerable bundle of papers, folded small, and neatly tied together with red tape.

When he had read the letter, he turned the package over with a sigh, reflectively eying it for some minutes, and then put it aside.

Later, when Mrs. Thomas, his landlady, had carried the child away to bed, he took, the papers up again, and, after some hesitation, slowly untied the tape which encircled them.

The letter was from Messrs. Furnival and Co., the firm of solicitors who had acted for Rainham, and were now representing Oswyn as his friend’s sole executor.

It contained a brief intimation that the grant of probate of the late Mr. Rainham’s will had been duly extracted, and ended with a request that the executor would consider the inclosed bundle of documents, which appeared to be of a private nature, and decide whether they should be preserved or destroyed.

When he had removed the tape, Oswyn noticed that a great many of the letters had the appearance of being in the same handwriting; these were tied up separately with a piece of narrow faded silk riband, and it was evident that they were arranged more or less in order of date; the writing in the case of the earliest letter being that of a child, while the most recent, dated less than a year ago, was a short note, an invitation, with the signature “Eve Lightmark.”

Oswyn contemplated the little bundle with an air of indecision, falling at last into a long reverie, his thoughts wandering from the letters to the child, the woman who had written them, the woman whose name his friend so rarely breathed, whose face he had seen for the first time, proud, and cold, and beautiful, that very afternoon.  Did she, too, care?  Would she guard her secret as jealously?

Suddenly he frowned; the thought of Lightmark’s effrontery recurred, breaking his contemplative calm and disturbing his speculations.  He laid the papers aside without further investigation, and, after gazing for a few minutes vacantly out of the uncurtained window, rolled a fresh cigarette and went out into the night.