"God bless my soul," said Mr. Carruthers,
pettishly, but rising as he spoke, and pushing
his chair away. "This is very strange; she has
been exposing herself to cold, I suppose. Yes,
yes, go on and tell Mrs. Brookes I am coming,
as soon as I send Gibson for Dr. Munns.

Dixon left the room, and Mr. Carruthers rang
the bell, and desired that the coachman should
attend him immediately. When Dixon had
entered the breakfast-room, Clare Carruthers had
been standing by the window, looking out on
the garden, her back turned towards her uncle.
She nad not looked round once during the
colloquy between her uncle and his wife's maid,
but had remained quite motionless. Now Mr.
Carruthers addressed her.

"Clare," he said, " you had better go to Mrs.
Carruthers." But his niece was no longer in the
room; she had softly opened the French window,
and passed into the flower-garden, carrying
among the sweet, opening flowers of the early
summer, and into the serene air, a face which
might have vied in its rigid terror with the face
up-stairs. When Mr. Carruthers had come in
that morning, and joined Clare in the pretty
breakfast-room, he was in an unusually pleasant
mood, and had greeted his niece with uncommon
kindness. He had found everything in good
order out of doors. No advantage had been
taken of his absence to neglect the inexorable
sweepings and rollings, the clippings and
trimmings, the gardening and grooming. So Mr.
Carruthers was in good humour in consequence,
and also because he was still nourishing the
secret sense of his own importance, which had
sprung up in his magisterial breast under the
flattering influence of Mr. Dalrymple's visit. So
when he saw Clare seated before the breakfast
equipage, looking in her simple, pretty morning
dress as fair and bright as the morning itself,
and when he received an intimation that he was
not to expect to see his wife at breakfast, he
recalled the resolution he had made last night,
and determined to broach the subject of Mr.
Dalrymple's visit to his niece without delay.

A pile of letters and newspapers lay on a
salver beside Mr. Carruthers's plate, but he did
not attend to them until he had made a very
respectable beginning in the way of breakfast.
He talked to Clare in a pleasant tone, and
presently asked her if she had been looking at the
London papers during the last few days. Clare
replied that she seldom read anything beyond
the deaths, births, and marriages, and an
occasional leader, and had not read even so much
while she had been at the Sycamores.

"Why do you ask, uncle?" she said. "Is
there any particular news?"

'"Why, yes, there is," replied Mr. Carruthers,
pompously. "There is a matter attracting
public attention just now in which I am, strange
to say, a good deal interested—in which
responsibility has been laid on me, indeed, in a
which, though flattering—very flattering
indeed—is, at the same time, embarrassing."

Mr. Carruthers became more and more
pompous with every word he spoke. Clare could
not repress a disrespectful notion that he
bore an absurd resemblance to the turkey-cock,
whose struttings and gobblings had often
amused her in the poultry-yard, as he mouthed
his words and moved his chin about in his stiff
and spotless cravat. His niece was rather
surprised by the matter of his discourse, as she was
not accustomed to associate the idea of importance
to society at large with Mr. Carruthers
of Poynings, and cherished a rather settled
conviction that, mighty potentate as he was within
the handsome gates of Poynings, the world
outside wagged very independently of him. She
looked up at him with an expression of interest
and also of surprise, but fortunately she did not
give utterance to the latter and certainly
predominant sentiment.

"The fact is," said Mr. Carruthers, "a murder
has been committed in London under very
peculiar circumstances. It is a most mysterious
affair, and the only solution of the mystery
hitherto suggested is that the motive
is political."

He paused, cleared his throat, once more
settled his chin comfortably, and went on, while
Clare listened, wondering more and more how
such a matter could affect her uncle. She was
a gentle-hearted girl, but not in the least silly,
and quite free from any sort of affectation; so
she expressed no horror or emotion at the mere
abstract idea of the murder, as a more young-
ladyish young lady would have done.

"Yes, uncle?" she said, simply, as he paused.

Mr. Carruthers continued:

"The murdered man was found by the riverside,
stabbed, and robbed of whatever money
and jewellery he had possessed. He was a
good-looking man, young, and evidently a
foreigner; but there were no means of identifying
the body, and the inquest was adjourned in
fact, is still adjourned."

"What an awful death to come by, in a
strange country!" said Clare, solemnly. "How
dreadful to think that his friends and relatives
will perhaps never know his fate! But how
did they know the poor creature was a foreigner,
uncle?"

"By his dress, my dear. It appears he had
on a fur-lined coat, with a hood—quite a
foreign article of dress; and the only person
at the inquest able to throw any light on the
crime was a waiter at an eating-house in the
Strand, who said that the murdered man had
dined there on a certain evening—last Thursday,
I believe—and had worn the fur coat, and
spoken in a peculiar squeaky voice. The waiter
felt sure he was not an Englishman, though he
spoke good English. So the inquest was
adjourned in order to get more evidence, if
possible, as to the identity of the murdered man,
and also that of the last person who had been
seen in his company. And this brings me to
the matter in which I am interested."

Clare watched her uncle with astonishment
as he rose from his chair and planted himself
upon the hearth-rug before the fireplace, now
adorned with its summer ornaments of plants