take a price for it a year or two ago. He had hardly slept a night there
in his life, and I got it lock-stock-and-barrel for a song. The
Northborough which, you will observe, it is 'near'--a good four miles,
as a matter of fact--is the well-known centre of the Delverton
iron-trade. But you may very well have spent a year in this country
without having heard of it; they would be shocked at Northborough, but
nowhere else."

Rachel had dropped the card into her lap; she was looking straight at
Mr. John Buchanan Steel himself.

"You are very rich," she said gravely.

"I am nothing of the kind," he protested. "The Duke is rich, if you
like, but I had to scrape together to pay him what would replenish his
racing-stud, or stand him in a new yacht."

But Rachel was not deceived.

"I might have known you were very rich," she murmured, as much to
herself as to him; and there was a strange finality in her tone, as
though all was over between them; a still more strange regret,
involuntary, unconscious, and yet distinct.

"Granting your hypothesis, for the sake of argument," he went on, with
his simplest smile; "is it as difficult as ever for the poor rich man to
get to heaven?"

Rachel spent some moments in serious thought. He was wonderfully honest
with her; of his central motive alone was she uncertain, unconvinced. In