And then, as the days wore themselves away and turned into months, Merriton woke up to the fact that he could wait no longer before putting his luck to the test so far as ’Toinette was concerned.  He had already confided his secret to Brellier, who laughed and patted him on the back and told him that he had known of it a long time and wished him luck.  It wasn’t long after this he was telling Brellier the good news that ’Toinette had accepted, and the two of them came to tell him of their happiness.

“So?” Mr. Brellier said quietly.  “Well, I am very, very glad.  You have taken your time, mes enfants, in settling this greatest of all questions, but perhaps you have been wise....  I am very happy for you, my ’Toinette, for I feel that your future is in the keeping of a good and true man.  There are all too few in the world, believe me!...

“’Toinette, a friend awaits you in the drawing-room.  Someone, I fear me, who will be none too pleased to hear this news, but that’s as may be.  Dacre Wynne is there, ’Toinette.”

At the name a chill came over Merriton.

Dacre Wynne! And here!  Impossible, and yet the name was too uncommon for it to be a different person from the man who always seemed somehow to turn up wherever he, Merriton, might chance to be.  Sort of a fateful affinity.  Good friends and all that, but somehow the things he always wanted, Dacre Wynne had invariably come by just beforehand.  There was much more than friendly rivalry in their acquaintanceship.  And once, as mere youngsters of seventeen and eighteen, there had been a girl, his girl, until Dacre came and took her with that masterful way of his.  There was something brutally over-powering about Dacre, hard as granite, forceful, magnetic.  To Nigel’s young, clean, wholesome mind, little given to morbid imaginings as it was, it had almost seemed as if their two spirits were in some stifling stranglehold together, wrapt about and intertwined by a hand operating by means of some unknown medium.  And now to find him here in his hour of happiness.  Was this close, uncomfortable companionship of the spirit to be forced on him again?  If Wynne were present he felt he would be powerless to avoid it.

“Do you know Dacre Wynne?” he asked, his voice betraying an emotion that was almost fear.

’Toinette Brellier glanced at her uncle, hesitated, and then murmured:  “Yes—­I—­do.  I didn’t know you did, Nigel.  He never spoke of you.  I—­he—­you see he wants me, too, Nigel, and I am almost afraid to tell him—­about us.  But I—­I have to see him.  Shall I tell him?”

“Of course.  Poor chap, I am sorry for him.  Yes, I know him, ’Toinette.  But I cannot say we are friends.  You see, I—­Oh, well, it doesn’t matter.”

But how much Dacre Wynne was to matter to him, and to ’Toinette, and to the public, and to far away Scotland Yard, and to the man of mystery, Hamilton Cleek, not they—­nor any one else—­could possibly tell.