wondered? My father, Sir George Woodhouse, having been an intimate friend of the old Earl’s, and his aide-de-camp when he was Viceroy of India, I had been taken into the latter’s confidential service as soon as I came down from Cambridge, and for the past ten years had lived as a careless bachelor in a pleasant old ivy-covered house at the end of the village, being treated more as one of the Stanchester family than as the millionaire landowner’s confidential secretary. The present Earl had been at Cambridge with me, and there was a strong bond of friendship between us.

“Yours has been a strange life,” said the publican at last, in order to obtain more details of the stranger and his motive for inquiring after the people at the Hall.

“It has; I’ve drifted half over the world, but the passion for wandering is now pretty well worn out of me,” wearily responded the other, taking a sip at his beer. “They say there’s no place like home. I used to think so when the ship was steaming over the blue sea at nights with all asleep below and the clear stars shining over me. I don’t think I shall live long; that’s why I’m back again once more in England. But,” he added, “we were talking of Lol—er, I mean Lady Lolita. Isn’t she even engaged?”

“Not that I know of,” answered the innkeeper. “If she were, some of the servants would be sure to chatter. There ain’t much as goes on up at the Hall without me knowing it.”

The estimable Warr was right. The tap-room of the Stanchester Arms was the village forum where the footmen, stablemen, kennel-hands and others employed in the Earl’s great establishment assembled nightly to drink beer and discuss the gossip of the day.

“Ah! I suppose she’s just as beautiful as ever?” remarked the stranger reflectively. His voice quivered oddly, and he rose wearily, brushing the knees of his frayed and shiny trousers. “She’s one of the prettiest women in all England,” added the ragged wayfarer, whose inquiries seemed to me to be made with some distinct purpose.

“She’s lovely,” declared Warr. “The papers often have portraits of her. Perhaps you’ve seen them?”

“Yes, I have,” he answered, and the words came out with something like a groan.

At that instant there reached our ears the familiar jingle of harness bells, and Warr, turning quickly, cried—

“Why, she’s just coming along! You’ll see her in a moment!” And 

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