courier-friend. The police were on the look-out for the lost man--
and that was the only hope which could be held forth for the present,
to Ferrari's wife.

'What do you think of it, Miss?' the poor woman asked eagerly.
'What would you advise me to do?'

Agnes was at a loss how to answer her; it was an effort even to
listen to what Emily was saying. The references in the courier's
letter to Montbarry--the report of his illness, the melancholy
picture of his secluded life--had reopened the old wound.
She was not even thinking of the lost Ferrari; her mind was at Venice,
by the sick man's bedside.

'I hardly know what to say,' she answered. 'I have had no experience
in serious matters of this kind.'

'Do you think it would help you, Miss, if you read my husband's
letters to me? There are only three of them--they won't take long
to read.'

Agnes compassionately read the letters.

They were not written in a very tender tone. 'Dear Emily,'
and 'Yours affectionately'--these conventional phrases,
were the only phrases of endearment which they contained.
In the first letter, Lord Montbarry was not very favourably spoken
of:--'We leave Paris to-morrow. I don't much like my lord.
He is proud and cold, and, between ourselves, stingy in money matters.
I have had to dispute such trifles as a few centimes in the hotel bill;