"Miss Brandt?"

The solemn-faced man-servant eyed him suspiciously as a stranger. He looked, to Graeme, like a superannuated official of the Court of Chancery.

"Miss Brandt is not at home, sir."

"Mrs. Pixley?"

"Mrs. Pixley is not at home, sir."

Was he right or wrong, he wondered, in thinking he detected a gleam of satisfied anticipation, of gratified understanding, in the solemn one\'s otherwise rigid eye—as of one who had been told to expect this and was lugubriously contented that it had duly come to pass?

However, there was nothing more to be done there at the moment. The polite conventions, to say nothing of the law, forbade him the pleasure of hurling the outcast of Chancery into the kennel and forcing his way in. Instead, he hailed a hansom and drove straight to Lincoln\'s Inn, boldly demanded audience of Mr. Pixley on pressing private business, and presently found himself in the presence.

Mr. Pixley stood on the hearthrug with his back to the fire, and handled his gold pince-nez defensively.

Here also Graeme had an intuition that he was expected, which was somewhat odd, you know, unless his letters had been handed to Mr. Pixley for perusal, which did not seem likely.

Mr. Pixley bowed formally and he responded—the salute before the click of the foils.

Mr. Pixley stood expectant, but by no means inviting of confidences such as his visitor was about to tender him. Rather he seemed fully armed for the defence, especially in the matter of the heavy gold pince-nez, which he held threateningly, after the manner of the headsman of old towards the victim on whom he was about to operate.

"I have taken the liberty of calling, Mr. Pixley," said Graeme,—and Mr. Pixley\'s manner in subtle fashion conveyed his full recognition of the fact that liberty it undoubtedly was, and that he had no smallest shadow of a right to be there,—"to inquire after Miss Brandt."

"Miss Brandt?" said Mr. Pixley vaguely, as though the name were new and strange to him. Or perhaps it was an endeavour on his part to express the impassable gulf which lay between his visitor and his ward, and the profound amazement he felt at any attempt on his visitor\'s part to abridge it. He also made a little involuntary preliminary cut at him with the pince-nez, as much as to say, "If this my weapon were of a size commensurate with my wishes and your colossal impudence, your head would lie upon the ground, young man."

"I have had the pleasure of meeting Miss Brandt at Lady Elspeth Gordon\'s and elsewhere. I think I may claim that we were on terms of friendship. Lady Elspeth has been called from home very suddenly to the bedside of her niece, Lady Assynt, and I have written twice to Miss Brandt and have had no reply. It struck me that she might be ill and I have called to inquire."

This was all lame enough no doubt, and so he felt it, but it was only in the nature of preliminary feinting. They were not yet at grips.

"Ah!" with ponderous deliberation, "you have called to inquire if Miss Brandt is ill. I have pleasure in informing you that she is not."

"I am glad to hear that, at all events. Might I ask if you are aware of any reason why she should not have received my letters—or replied to them?"

"Two questions," said Mr. Pixley, cutting them in slices with his pince-nez, as though they were to be charged up............