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 very handsome woman, and that she was asking me the reasons for my visit. I had not quite understood until that instant how delicate my mission was.

“I have the pleasure,” said I, “of knowing your father.”

It was a clumsy introduction, and the lady made me feel it.

“There is nothing in common between my father and me,” she said. “I owe him nothing, and his friends are not mine. If it were not for the late Sir Charles Baskerville and some other kind hearts I might have starved for all that my father cared.”

“It was about the late Sir Charles Baskerville that I have come here to see you.”

The freckles started out on the lady’s face.

“What can I tell you about him?” she asked, and her fingers played nervously over the stops of her typewriter.

“You knew him, did you not?”

“I have already said that I owe a great