I was thinking, wondering if I should tell him about my meeting with Sir Gilbert Carstairs at the cross-roads.

Some one held the horse, and the two men went up to the sixth floor and into Carstairs's studio, where they discovered pretty Mrs. Carstairs in the act of sewing a new collar-band on one of her husband's old shirts.

And I made up my mind there and then to say nothing in my evidence about that meeting, for I had no reason to connect such a great gentleman as Sir Gilbert Carstairs with the murder, and it seemed to me that his presence at those cross-roads was easily enough explained.

I had made up my mind on a certain course, and until it was taken I could not let out a word of what was by that time nobody's secret but mine to him, nor to any onenot even to Maisie Dunlop, to whom, purposely, I had not as yet said anything about my seeing Sir Gilbert Carstairs on the night of Phillips's murder.

The answer is simple, and there's the excuse of human nature in itI was so much filled with the grand prospects of my stewardship, and of all it would bring me, and was so highly pleased with Sir Gilbert Carstairs for his advancement of my fortunes, thathere's the plain truthI could not bring myself to think of, or bother with, anything else.

He determined to go as far as the Palace Garden as the Marquis de Neuville, and say nothing whatever to Mr. Carstairs about it.

That's the man there's been so much talk about latelySir Gilbert Carstairs of Hathercleugh House, the new successor to the old baronetcy.

"He may have brought the yacht in, but we don't know that he didn't bring Carstairs aboard her.

The fact is, wethat is, Iintroduced Sir Gilbert Carstairs to him.

"They were kept in a certain safe in a small room used by Lady Carstairs as her boudoir.