"Why, Miss Nelson!" he said. "I never expected to see you here."

    She flushed, and strove vainly to recall where he had ever seen her.

    "You remember me, miss—Sweeny," he said, and her face went a deeper red.

    "Why, of course. Sweeny."

    She was embarrassed, humiliated, at this discovery.

    "You left Mr Merrivan's service rather hurriedly, didn't you?"

    He was uncomfortable in his turn.

    "Yes, I did, miss." He coughed. "I had a bit of a disagreement with Mr Merrivan. A very mean gentleman, and awfully suspicious." He coughed again. "Did you hear nothing, miss?"

    She shook her head. The Nelsons did not keep their servants long enough to reach the stage of intimacy where they could gossip with them, even if they were so inclined.

    "Well, the fact is," said Sweeny, a trifle relieved that he had the opportunity of getting in his version first, "Mr Merrivan missed some silver. Very foolishly I had lent it to a brother of mine to copy. He was very interested in old silver, being a working jeweller, and when Mr Merrivan missed the silver—" He coughed again, and grew weakly incoherent. He had been accused of stealing—he! And he had been fired without ado. "I'd have been starving now, miss, only Mr Selim got to hear of me and gave me this job. It is not much," he added deprecatingly, "but it is something. I often wish I was back in the happy valley. That's what I always called Beverley Green."

    She cut short his flow of explanation and reminiscence.

    "When can I see Mr Selim?" she asked.

    He shook his head. "I can't tell you that, miss. I've never seen him myself."

    "What!" she said, staring at him in amazement.

    "It's a fact, miss. He's a moneylender—why, of course, I needn't tell you that."

    He looked knowingly at her, and she felt ready to sink through the floor from very shame.

    "All his business is done by letter. I receive visitors and fix appointments. Not that he ever keeps them," he said, "but the clients fill in blanks—you understand, miss, the amount of money they want, the security they can offer, and all that sort of thing—and I leave them here in that safe for Mr Selim when he comes."

    "When does he come?"

    "God knows," said the other piously. "He must come, because the letters are taken away two or three times a week. He communicates with the people himself. I never know how much they borrow or how much they pay back."

    "But when he wants to give instructions does he write them?" asked the girl, her curiosity getting the better other disappointment.

    "He telephones. I don't know where from. It's a queer job. Only two hours a day, and only four days a week."

    "Is there no possibility of seeing him?" she asked desperately.

    "Not a scrap," said Sweeny, becoming important again. "There's only one way of conducting business with Abe—he wouldn't be mad if he knew I called him Abe, not at all—and that is by correspondence."

    She dropped her eyes to the counter and stood awhile thinking.

    "Is Mr Nelson quite well, miss?" asked Sweeny.

    "Very well, thank you," she said hastily. "Thank you, Sweeny. I—" It was hateful to take a servant into her confidence. "You won't mention the fact that you saw me here?"

    "Certainly not," said the virtuous Sweeny. "Lord, miss, if you knew the people who come up here you would be surprised.