would scarcely think, would you, that I was the sort of man to live on irreconcilable terms with one of my own family? But there it is. Don't think hardly of her. It is more the fault of circumstances than her fault. But I couldn't go to see her—and she wouldn't come to see me."
Wrayson sighed.
"It is like the rest of this cursed mystery, utterly incomprehensible," he declared. "I shall never——"
With his glass half raised to his lips, he paused suddenly in his sentence. His face became a study in the expression of a boundless amazement. His eyes were fastened upon the figures of two people on their way up the room, preceded by the smiling maître d'hôtel. Some words, or rather an exclamation, broke incoherently from his lips. He set down his glass hurriedly, and a stain of red wine crept unheeded across the tablecloth.
"Look," he whispered hoarsely,—"look!"
{{c|CHAPTER XVII
