for a moment that Lord Loudwater had been able to withstand it. Of course, he would be violent, too, but with a much less impressive violence.
Lord Loudwater had been lavish in the matter of newspapers; he was a rich man, and they had been his only reading. Mr. Manley read the report of the inquest in all the chief London dailies, and found in the Daily Planet another nervously picturesque article on the visit of the mysterious woman from the nervously picturesque pen of Mr. Douglas.
Here was certainly a pretty kettle of fish. He could not doubt that the woman was Helena. It explained Flexen's questioning him whether he had any knowledge of an entanglement between Lord Loudwater and a woman, and Flexen's keen desire to find some other firm of lawyers who might have been called in to deal with such an entanglement. But he could not for a moment bring himself to believe that there could have ever been any need for Helena to have recourse to the knife. He could not see Lord Loudwater resisting her when she became really angry; he must have given way. None the less, he did not underestimate the awkwardness, the danger even, of her having paid that visit and had that quarrel at such an unfortunate hour.
He had matter enough for earnest thought during the funeral. It was a large funeral, though there were not many funeral guests. Five ladies, an aunt and four cousins, of Lord Loudwater's own genera-
