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32 business. Why should you concern yourself about it, Julian? Nothing you can do can be of use to the poor dead girl. What is it all to you? What have you to do with it?"

"My duty," answered Wyllard firmly. "As a magistrate I am bound to see that a terrible crime—if crime it be—shall not go unpunished in my district. I have no particular aptitude in unravelling mysteries. I therefore send for my old schoolfellow, who has won his reputation among the sinuous ways of crime."

"Ah, I remember. You and Mr. Distin were together at Marlborough," said Dora musingly. "That is enough to make him an interesting person in my mind."

"Yes, we were companions and rivals in the same form," answered Julian. "There were some who thought us two the sharpest lads in the school. In all our studies we were neck and neck: but in other points the difference between us was a wide one. Distin was the son of a rich London solicitor—an only son, who could draw upon an indulgent father for means to gratify every whim, who had his clothes made by a fashionable tailor, and could afford to hire a hunter whenever he got the chance of riding one. I was one of many children—the fourth son of a Warwickshire parson; so I had to reckon my cash by sixpences, and to wear my clothes till they were threadbare. Yes, there was an impassable gulf between Distin and me in those days."

"And now you must be a great deal richer than he, and you can receive him in this lovely old place."

"There will be some pride in that. Yes, Dora, Fortune was at home to me when I knocked at her door. I have been what is called a lucky man."

"And you are a happy one, I hope," murmured his wife, leaning her head upon his shoulder, as he stood before the open window, looking dreamily out at summer woods.

"Ineffably happy, sweet one, in having won you," he answered tenderly, kissing the fair broad brow.

"You must have been wonderfully clever," said Dora enthusiastically, "beginning without any capital, and within twenty years making a great fortune and a great name in the world of finance."

"I was fortunate in my enterprises when I was a young man, and I lived at a time when fortunes were made—and lost—rapidly. I may have had a longer head than some of my compeers; at any rate, I was cooler-headed than the majority of them, and I kept out of rotten schemes."

"Or got out of them before they collapsed," Mr. Wyllard might have said, had he displayed an exhaustive candour.

But in talking of business matters to a woman a man always leaves a margin.