Kathleen Farrel had the park to herself. She was reading the _Morning Post_, which her aunt, Mrs. Knolles, took in for the literary articles, and which you would find on her table side by side with newspapers and journals of a widely different and sometimes, indeed, of a startling and flamboyant character; for Mrs. Knolles was catholic in her ideas and daring in her tastes.
Kathleen Farrel was reading listlessly without interest. She had lived so much abroad that English news had little attraction for her, and she was no longer young enough to regret missing any of the receptions, race-meetings, garden-parties, and other social events which she was idly skimming the record of. For it was now the height of the London season, but Mrs. Knolles had let the London house in Hill Street. She always let it every summer, and in the winter as well, whenever she could find a tenant.
A paragraph had caught Kathleen's eye and had arrested her attention. It began thus: "The death has occurred at Monks-well Hall of Sir James Stukely."
Sir James Stukely was Lancelot Stukely's uncle. Lancelot would inherit the baronetcy and a comfortable income. He had left the army some years ago. He was at present abroad, performing some kind of secretarial duties to the Governor of Malta. He would give up that job, which was neither lucrative nor interesting, he would come home, and then----
At any rate, he had not altogether forgotten her. His monthly letters proved that. They had been unfailingly regular. Only--well, for the last year they had been undefinably different. Ever since that visit to Cairo. She had heard stories of an attachment, a handsome Italian lady, who looked like a Renaissance picture and who was said to be unscrupulous. But she really knew nothing, and Lancelot had always been so reserved, so reticent; his letters had always been so bald, almost formal, ever since their brief engagement six years before had been broken off. Ever since that memorable night in Ireland when she confessed to her father, who was more than usually violent and had drunk an extra glass of old Madeira, that she had refused to marry Lancelot. At first she had asked him not to write, and he had dutifully accepted the restriction. But later, when her father died, he had written to her and she had answered his letter. Since then he had written once a month without fail from India, where his regiment had been quartered, and then from Malta. But never had there been a single allusion to the past or to the future. The tone of them would be: "Dear Miss Farrel, We are having very good sport." Or "Dear Miss Farrel, We went to the opera last night. It was too classical for me." And they had always ended: "Yours sincerely, Lancelot Stukely."