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She paused at this, still looking earnest and asking: “What have you found?”

“Some ancient family papers, in a secret compartment of my writing- table.” And he took up the packet he had left out, holding it before her eyes. “A lot of other things like that.”

“What are they?” murmured Mrs. Ryves.

“I haven’t the least idea. They’re sealed.”

“You haven’t broken the seals?” She had come further back.

“I haven’t had time; it only happened ten minutes ago.”

“I knew it,” said Mrs. Ryves, more gaily now.

“What did you know?”

“That you were in some predicament.”

“You’re extraordinary. I never heard of anything so miraculous; down two flights of stairs.”

“ARE you in a quandary?” the visitor asked.

“Yes, about giving them back.” Peter Baron stood smiling at her and rapping his packet on the palm of his hand. “What do you advise?”

She herself smiled now, with her eyes on the sealed parcel. “Back to whom?”

“The man of whom I bought the table.”

“Ah then, they’re not from YOUR family?”

“No indeed, the piece of furniture in which they were hidden is not an ancestral possession. I bought it at second hand–you see it’s old–the other day in the King’s Road. Obviously the man who sold it to me sold me more than he meant; he had no idea (from his own point of view it was stupid of him), that there was a hidden chamber or that mysterious documents were buried there. Ought I to go and tell him? It’s rather a nice question.”

“Are the papers of value?” Mrs. Ryves inquired.

“I haven’t the least idea. But I can ascertain by breaking a seal.”

“Don’t!” said Mrs. Ryves, with much expression. She looked grave again.

“It’s rather tantalising–it’s a bit of a problem,” Baron went on, turning his packet over.

Mrs. Ryves hesitated. “Will you show me what you have in your hand?”

He gave her the packet, and she looked at it and held it for an instant to her nose. “It has a queer, charming old fragrance,” he said.

“Charming? It’s horrid.” She handed him back the packet, saying again more emphatically “Don’t!”

“Don’t break a seal?”

“Don’t give back the papers.”

“Is it honest to keep them?”

“Certainly. They’re yours as much as the people’s of the shop. They were in the hidden chamber when the table came to the shop, and the people had every opportunity to find them out. They didn’t– therefore let them take the consequences.”

Peter Baron reflected, diverted by her intensity. She was pale, with eyes almost ardent. “The table had been in the place for years.”

“That proves the things haven’t been missed.”

“Let me show you how they were concealed,” he rejoined; and he exhibited the ingenious recess and the working of the curious spring. She was greatly interested, she grew excited and became familiar; she appealed to him again not to do anything so foolish as to give up the papers, the rest of which, in their little blank, impenetrable covers, he placed in a row before her. “They might be traced–their history, their ownership,” he argued; to which she replied that this was exactly why he ought to be quiet. He declared that women had not the smallest sense of honour, and she retorted that at any rate they have other perceptions more delicate than those of men. He admitted that the papers might be rubbish, and she conceded that nothing was more probable; yet when he offered to settle the point off-hand she caught him by the wrist, acknowledging that, absurd as it was, she was nervous. Finally she put the whole thing on the ground of his just doing her a favour. She asked him to retain the papers, to be silent about them, simply because it would please her. That would be reason enough. Baron’s acquaintance, his agreeable relations with her, advanced many steps in the treatment of this question; an element of friendly candour made its way into their discussion of it.