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"I wonder if you are really sad?" smiled the woman. "I wonder."

Joan's face was inscrutable.

"You wouldn't imagine that I had a grisly past too, would you?" she asked. "Remember that I am quite old—nearly twenty-three."

"I shouldn't imagine so," said Mrs. Cornford, amusement in her fine eyes.

"Or a terrible secret?"

"No, I shouldn't think that either." Mrs. Cornford shook her head.

Joan sighed again.

"I'll go back to my burden," she said.

The "burden" was walking in the long chestnut avenue when she overtook him.

"I'm glad you've come, Lady Joan," he said with ill-assumed heartiness. "I'm starving!"

Joan Carston wished she had waited an hour or two.

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Ferdinand Carston, ninth Earl of Creith, was a thin, querulous man, whose dominant desire was a negative one. He did not want to be bothered. He had spent his life avoiding trouble, and his deviations had led him into strange places. His "paper" was held by half a score of moneylenders, his mortgages were on the books of as many banks. He did not wish to be bothered by farm bailiffs and factors, or by tenant farmers. He could not be worried with the choice of his agents, and most of them did not bother to render him accurate accounts. From time to time he attempted to recover his heavy liabilities by daring speculations, and as he could not be troubled with the business of investigating their soundness, he usually returned to the well-worn path that led to the little moneylenders' offices that infest Sackville and Jermyn streets.