Harriet. I must not go.”

“Why, whatever has come to you, Ean?” said I. “Are you getting anxious about poor old me? My dear boy, just think how often I have been alone here.”

“Yes, but I don’t intend to leave you so much in future. When the reasons make themselves known to me, they shall be known to you, Harriet. Meanwhile, I am going to live at home. The little Jap stops with me. He is coming down from town to-day, so I hope you will make arrangements for him.”

He spoke of his Japanese servant Okyada, whom he brought from Tokio with him three years ago. The little fellow had served him most faithfully at his chambers in the Albany, and I was not displeased to have him down in Suffolk. Ean’s words, however, troubled me greatly, for I imagined that some danger threatened him in London, and a sister’s heart was beating already to discover it.

“Cannot you tell me something, Ean?”

He laughed boyishly, in a way that should have reassured me.

“I will tell you something, Harriet. Do you remember the bronze pearls that were stolen from my flat in Paris more than three years ago?”

“Of course, Ean; I remember them perfectly. How should I forget them? You don’t mean to say⁠——”

“That I have recovered them? No—not quite. But I know where they are.”

“Then you will recover them, Ean?”

“Ah, that is for to-morrow. Let Okyada, by the way, have the room next to my dressing-room. He won’t interfere with my clothes, Harriet. You will still be able to coddle me as much as you please, and, of course, I will always warm the scissors before I cut my nails in winter.”

He was laughing at me again—a little unjustly, perhaps, as I have always believed that influenzas and rheums come to those who allow anything cold to touch the skin—but this is my old womanish fancy, while Ean is not altogether free himself from those amiable weaknesses and fads which take some part in all our lives. He, for instance, must have all his neckties of one colour in a certain drawer; some of his many clothes must go to the press upon one day and others upon the next. He buys great quantities of things from his hosier, and does not wear one half of them. I am always scolding him for walking about the grounds at night in his dress clothes; but he never does so without first warming his cloth cap at the 

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