exactly why Mr. Hamel is a guest here to-night--why he came to
these parts at all? No? Listen, then. He came to take possession
of the Tower. The worst of it is that it belongs to him, too. His
father bought it from your father more years ago than we should
care to talk about. I have really been a trespasser all this time."

They took their places at a small round table in the middle of the
dining-room. The shaded lights thrown downwards upon the table
seemed to leave most of the rest of the apartment in semi-darkness.
The gloomy faces of the men and women whose pictures hung upon the
walls were almost invisible. The servants themselves, standing a
little outside the halo of light, were like shadows passing swiftly
and noiselessly back and forth. At the far end of the room was an
organ, and to the left a little balcony, built out as though for an
orchestra. Hamel looked about him almost in wonderment. There was
something curiously impressive in the size of the apartment and
its emptiness.

"A trespasser," Mr. Fentolin continued, as he took up the menu and
criticised it through his horn-rimmed eyeglass, "that is what I
have been, without a doubt."

"But for your interest and consequent trespass," Hamel remarked, "I
should probably have found the roof off and the whole place in ruins."

"Instead of which you found the door locked against you," Mr.
Fentolin pointed out. "Well, we shall see. I might, at any rate,
have lost the opportunity of entertaining you here this evening.
I am particularly glad to have an opportunity of making you known
to my niece and nephew. I think you will agree with me that here