of expression. Baron came awkwardly to him and spoke with a stumbling kind
of friendliness. "Hagar, I wish the Arabs had got him, so help me!"

"For God's sake think of what you are saying."

"Of course it doesn't sound right to you, and it wouldn't sound right
from you; but I'm a rowdy colonial and I'm damned if I take it back!--and
I like you, Hagar!" and, turning, he hurried out of the house.

Mrs. Detlor had not staid at the hotel long; but, as soon as she had
recovered, went out for a walk. She made her way to the moor. She wandered
about for a half hour or so and at last came to a quiet place where she
had been accustomed to sit. As she neared it she saw pieces of an envelope
lying on the ground. Something in the writing caught her eye. She stopped,
picked up the pieces and put them together. "Oh," she said with misery in
her voice, "What does it all mean? Letters everywhere, like the writing on
the wall!"

She recognized the writing as that of Mark Telford. His initials were in
the corner. The envelope was addressed to John Earl Gladney at Trinity
hospital, New York. She saw a strange tangle of events. John Earl Gladney
was the name of the man who had married an actress called Ida Folger, and
Ida Folger was the mother of Mark Telford's child! She had seen the mother
in London; she had also seen the child with the Margraves, who did not
know her origin, but who had taken her once when her mother was ill and
had afterward educated her with their own daughter. What had Ida Folger to
do with George Hagar, the man who (it was a joy and yet an agony to her)
was more to her than she dared to think? Was this woman for the second
time to play a part--and what kind of part--in her life? What was Mark
Telford to John Gladney? The thing was not pleasant to consider. The lines