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189 color of the begonias, which festooned some of the verandahs along the roadway, showed curiously brilliant. They exchanged a few commonplace remarks about the scenery, the vegetation and the beauty of the river. Then Lord Waveryng halted suddenly. and turned on his companion deliberately taking his cigar from his mouth.

"I think I ought to tell you," he said "that I never forget a face, and that I recognized you almost as soon as I heard your name this evening. I presume you have good reasons for not wishing to be identified as Captain Morres Blakes of the?'

"I have the best reasons that man can have." said Blake. "Lord Waveryng, I'll be as frank with you as you are with me, and you know my reasons almost as well as I do."

"It's twelve years ago," said Lord Waveryng, "and things have changed a good deal since then. This Parliamentary movement has made a difference. I don't suppose the authorities would want to rake up that business. The reason why I tackled you at once is that I don't know whether you know that Lord Coola's two boys died of diphtheria last year, and that you stand next in succession to Coola,"

"No," said Blake, startled. "I did not know it, and I am truly sorry."

"It is worth your thinking about," said Lord Waveryng. "I thought I had better tell you."

Blake was silent for a few moments. At last he spoke. "There were four lives between me and Coola when—when I left Ireland, and there seemed a probability of several more. It was not to be supposed that my brother would not marry again after Lady Coola's death; and who could have dreamed that my brother William would have been carried off so young—and now these boys! Poor chaps! It is like fatality."

"Yes," assented Lord Waveryng, "seems like a fatality, don't it? Anyhow you may be the next Lord Coola."

"Coola will marry again now," said Blake, decidedly. "He is bound to do it."