“I feel like a convict arrested by plainclothes men,” complained Harry, glancing before and behind.

“You won’t,” I said, “when you have talked to me five minutes.”

“Sha’n’t I?” he asked, dully.  He said nothing more, and we pursued our way to the hotel in silence.  Elizabeth Talbert and Dr. Denbigh talked enough to make up for us.

Aunt Elizabeth made herself so charming, so acutely charming, that I heard the boy draw one quick, sharp breath.  But his eyes followed her more sullenly than tenderly, and when she clung to the doctor’s arm upon a muddy crossing the young man turned to me with a sad, whimsical smile.

“It doesn’t seem to make much difference—­does it, Mrs. Price?  She treats us all alike.”

There is the prettiest little writing-room in “The Happy Family,” all blue and mahogany and quiet.  This place was deserted, and thither I betook myself with Harry Goward, and there he began as soon as we were alone: 

“Well, what is it, Mrs. Price?”

“Nothing but this,” I said, gently enough.  “I have taken it upon myself to solve a mystery that has caused a good deal of confusion in our family.”

Without warning I took the muddy letter from my pocket, and slid it under his eyes upon the big blue blotter.

“I don’t wish to be intrusive or strenuous,” I pleaded, “none of us wishes to be that.  Nobody is here to call you to account, Mr. Goward, but you see this letter.  It was received at our house in the condition in which you find it.  Would you be so kind as to supply the missing address?  That is all I want of you.”

The boy’s complexion ran through the palette, and subsided from a dull Indian-red to a sickly Nile-green.  “Hasn’t she ever read it?” he demanded.

“Nobody has ever read it,” I said.  “Naturally—­since it is not addressed.  This letter went fishing with Billy.”

The young man took the letter and examined it in trembling silence.

Perhaps if Fate ever broke him on her wheel it was at that moment.  His destiny was still in his own hands, and so was the letter.  Unaddressed, it was his personal property.  He could retain it if he chose, and the family mystery would darken into deeper gloom than ever.  I felt my comfortable, commonplace heart beat rapidly.

Our silence had passed the point of discomfort, and was fast reaching that of anguish, when the boy lifted his head manfully, dipped one of “The Happy Family’s” new pens into a stately ink-bottle, and rapidly filled in the missing address upon the unfortunate letter.  He handed it to me without a word.  My eyes blurred when I read: 

“Personal.  Miss Peggy Talbert, Eastridge. (Kindness of Miss Alice Talbert.)”

“What shall I do with it?” I asked, controlling my agitation.

“Deliver it to her, if you please, as quickly as possible.  I thought of everything else.  I never thought of this.”