'Might he not have inadvertently left it there when with you?'

'You will scarcely think so after reading the date of the five-pound note of the Hampshire County Bank, which you will find within the inner lining.'

'The date is 1831.'

'Exactly. I have also strong reason for believing that Owen Lloyd is now, or has been lately, residing in some part of Hampshire.'

'That is important.'

'This letter,' continued Mr Smith; and then pausing for a brief space in some embarrassment, he added—'The commissioner informed me, Mr Waters, that you were a person upon whose good sense and discretion, as well as sagacity and courage, every confidence might be placed. I therefore feel less difficulty than I otherwise should in admitting you a little behind the family screen, and entering with you upon matters one would not willingly have bruited in the public ear.'

I bowed, and he presently proceeded.

'Owen Lloyd, I should tell you, is married to a very amiable, superior sort of woman, and has one child, a daughter named Caroline, an elegant, gentle-mannered, beautiful girl I admit, to whom my wife was much attached, and she was consequently a frequent visitor in Brook Street. This I always felt was very imprudent; and the result was, that my son Arthur Smith—only about two years her senior; she was just turned of seventeen when her father was compelled to fly from his creditors—formed a silly, boyish attachment for her. They have since, I gather from this letter, which I found yesterday in Arthur's dressing-room, carried on, at long intervals, a clandestine correspondence, waiting for the advent of more propitious times—which, being interpreted,' added Mr Smith with a sardonic sneer, 'means of course my death and burial.'

'You are in possession, then, if Miss Caroline Lloyd is living with her father, of his precise place of abode?'

'Not exactly. The correspondence is, it seems, carried on without the knowledge of Owen Lloyd; and the girl states in answer, it should seem, to Arthur's inquiries, that her father would never forgive her if, under present circumstances, she disclosed his place of residence—we can now very well understand that—and she intreats Arthur not to persist, at least for the present, in his attempts to discover her. My son, you must understand, is now of age, and so far as fortune is concerned, is, thanks to a legacy from an aunt on his mother's side, independent of me.'