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 laughter and complete acceptance. The one detail he felt certain of was this dreadful thing he had divined in Vance. Trying hard to disbelieve it, he found he could not. It was true. Though without a shred of real evidence to support it, the horror of it remained. He knew it in his very bones.

And this, perhaps, was what drove him to seek the comforting companionship of folk he understood and felt at home with. He told his host and hostess about the strangers, though omitting the actual conversation because they would merely smile in blank miscomprehension. But the moment he described the strong black eyes beneath the level eyelids, his hostess turned with a start, her interest deeply roused: 'Why, it's that awful Statham woman,' she exclaimed, 'that must be Lady Statham, and the man she calls her nephew.'

'Sounds like it, certainly,' her husband added. 'Felix, you'd better clear out. They'll bewitch you too.'

And Henriot bridled, yet wondering why he did so. He drew into his shell a little, giving the merest sketch of what had happened. But he listened closely while these two practical old friends supplied him with information in the gossiping way that human nature loves. No doubt there was much embroidery, and more perversion, exaggeration too, but the account evidently rested upon some basis of solid foundation for all that. Smoke and fire go together always.

'He is her nephew right enough,' Mansfield corrected his wife, before proceeding to his own man's form of elaboration; 'no question about that, I believe. He's her favourite nephew, and she's as rich as a pig. He follows her out here every year,