door, apparently watching the rapid descent of the lift which had brought
her to the landing of No. 7.

She did not move when the door behind her opened, and Lord Ashiel,
emerging from it in a hurry to catch the lift before it vanished, nearly
knocked her down. She gave a startled gasp and stepped hastily to one
side into the dark shadows of the passage as he, muttering an apology,
darted forward to the iron gateway and applied his finger heavily to the
electric bell-push. But the liftboy had caught sight of him with the tail
of his eye, and was already reascending.

His anxiety allayed, Lord Ashiel turned again to express his regrets to
the lady he had inadvertently collided with, but she had disappeared into
the flat, of which Higgs was even then closing the door.

Ashiel stepped into the lift and sat down rather wearily on the
leather-covered seat.

Although, to some extent, the relief of having unburdened his mind of
secrets that had weighed upon it for so many years produced in him a
certain lightness of heart to which he had long been a stranger, yet
the very charm of the impression made upon him by Juliet Byrne, during
his first meeting with her that morning, led him to suspect uneasily
that his hopes of her proving to be his child were due rather to the
pleasure it gave him to anticipate such a possibility than to any more
logical reason.

He was so entirely engrossed in an honest endeavour to adjust correctly
the balance of probabilities, as to remain unconscious that the lift had
stopped at the ground floor, and it was not until the boy who was in