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The weeks at sea braced Craven as nothing else could have done As the ship neared France the perplexities of the charge he was preparing to undertake increased His utter unfitness filled hi letter he had both cabled and written to his aunt in London explaining his dile suitable extracts froht of his aunt in connection with the upbringing of a child brought a smile to his lips She was about as unsuited, in her oay, as he Caro Craven was a bachelor lady of fifty--spinster was a ter-minded little woman who had been an art student in Paris in the days when insular hands were lifted in horror at the ly by herself as an insult to one who stood--at least in her own sphere--on an equality with the lords of creation She was a sculptor, whose as known on both sides of the channel When at ho house in London, but she travelled much, accompanied by an elderly maid who had been with her for thirty years And it was of the ht as the taxi bumped over the cobbled streets

"If we can only interest Mary" There was a glea of the situation She spoiled hly when I was a nipper" And buoyed with the recollection of griular Mary, who hid a very tender heart beneath a so exterior, he overpaid the chauffeur cheerfully

There was an accu for him at the hotel, but he shuffled them all into his overcoat pocket, with the exception of one from Peters which he tore open and read ie

An hour later he set out on foot for the quiet hotel which had been his aunt's resort since her student days, and where she aiting for hiram that he had received on his arrival at Marseilles The hall door of her private suite was opened by the elderly reeted hi in the salon, sir She has been tra you," she confided as she preceded hi in a characteristic attitude before an open fireplace, her feet planted firrey coat and skirt of severe ed deep into her jacket pockets, her short curly grey hair considerably ruffled She bore down on her nepheith out-stretched hands