His brows expressed sorrow rather than anger on the subject of his hard-fisted relative.

“Do you happen to know anything,” pursued Olga, lowering her voice, “of a transaction about certain—­certain letters, which were given up by Daniel Otway?”

“Why—­yes.  I’ve heard something about that affair.”

“Those letters, I always understood, were purchased from him at a considerable price.”

“That’s true,” replied Alexander, smiling familiarly as he leaned across the table.  “But the considerable price was never paid—­not one penny of it.”

Olga’s face changed.  She had a wondering lost, pained look.

“Mr. Otway, are you sure of that?”

“Well, pretty sure.  Dan has talked of it more than once, and I don’t think he could talk as he does if there wasn’t a real grievance.  I’m very much afraid he was cheated.  Perhaps I oughtn’t to use that word; I daresay Dan had no right to ask money for the letters at all.  But there was a bargain, and I’m afraid it wasn’t honourably kept on the other side.”

Olga reflected for a moment, and rose, saying that she was obliged, that this ended her business.  Alexander’s curiosity sought to prolong the conversation, but in vain.  He then threw out a word concerning his professional interests; would the lady permit him to bespeak her countenance for a new singer, an Irish girl of great talent, who would be coming out very shortly?

“She has a magnificent song, madam!  The very spirit of Patriotism—­ stirring, stirring!  Let me offer you one of her photos.  Miss Ennis Corthy—­you’ll soon see the announcements.”

Olga drove away in a troubled dream.

CHAPTER XXXV

“The 13th will suit admirably,” wrote Helen Borisoff.

“That morning my guests leave, and we shall be quiet—­except for the popping of guns round about.  Which reminds me that my big, healthy Englishman of a cousin (him you met in town) will be down here to slaughter little birds in aristocratic company, and may most likely look in to tell us of his bags.  I will meet you at the station.”

So Irene, alone, journeyed from King’s Cross into the North Riding.  At evening, the sun golden amid long lazy clouds that had spent their showers, she saw wide Wensleydale, its closing hills higher to north and south as the train drew onward, green slopes of meadow and woodland rising to the beat and the heather.  At a village station appeared the welcoming face of her friend Helen.  A countryman with his homely gig drove them up the hillside, the sweet air singing about them from moorland heights, the long dale spreading in grander prospect as they ascended, then hidden as they dropped into a wooded glen, where the horse splashed through a broad beck and the wheels jolted over boulders of limestone.  Out again into the sunset, and at a turn of the climbing road stood up before them the grey old Castle, in its shadow the church and the hamlet, and all around the glory of rolling hills.