Meantime Norie is reading through some of the recent correspondence on the file.) _Vivie_ (on her return): "Pouf! It _was_ hot in Fleet Street! I'm sorry for poor Frankie, because he seems so to have set his heart on marrying me.

But I do hope he will take this answer as _final_." _Norie_: "I suppose you are not refusing him for the same old reason--that vague suggestion that he might be your half-brother ?" _Vivie_: "Oh _no_! Besides I pretty well know for a fact he isn't, he simply couldn't be.

I'm absolutely sure my father wasn't Sam Gardner, any more than George Crofts was.

I believe it was a young Irish seminarist, some student for the priesthood whom my mother met in Belgium the year before I was born.

If I ever find out more I will tell you.