"My best wishes!" he said heartily, "and I hope that the experiment will prove a complete success."
"I hope so, too," returned Colin. "It certainly looks promising enough as far as it's gone at present."
The lawyer emptied his glass and replaced it beside the tantalus.
"I shall be very interested to hear how you get on," he continued. "The Professor is a wonderful old gentleman, but of course he's inclined to be a trifle eccentric. With a little tact, however, I think you ought to manage him excellently. As soon as you have settled down you must come round to dinner one night and tell me all about it."
Colin made some conventional reply to the effect that he would be delighted, though, as a matter of strict accuracy, the prospect of his confiding in Mr. Medwin seemed to him to be a particularly remote one.
However, he shook hands cordially enough, and, escorted by his host as far as the garden gate, started off briskly down the terrace on his return journey.
He had reached the corner and was just turning into Kensington Square when his thoughts suddenly went back to the photograph which he had been examining in the dining-room.
At the same moment a flash of memory darted through his mind, and he pulled up short with a half-stifled exclamation.
He knew now!
It was a portrait of Major Fenton, the man to whom Nancy had introduced him outside her studio.