and so eminently useful.




CHAPTER IV

FREIGHTED

I shall remember while the light lives yet,
And in the darkness I shall not forget.


Seymour Michael was no coward where hard words and no hard knocks were to
be exchanged. His faith in his own keenness of intellect and
unscrupulousness of tongue was unbounded.

He smiled when he read Anna Agar's letter over a dainty breakfast at his
club the next morning. The cunning of it was obvious to his cunning
comprehension, and the fact of her suppressing her newly-acquired surname
only convinced him that she knew but little about himself.

That same evening at four o'clock he presented himself at the lordly
hall-door of Mr. Hethbridge. Since first he had raised his hand to this
knocker, fingering his letter of introduction to the East India director,
Seymour Michael had learnt many things, but the knowledge was not yet his
that indiscriminate untruths are apt to fly home to roost.

Anna Agar had easily managed to send her mother out of the house; her
husband spent his days as far from Clapham as circumstances would allow.