The Chapters

Letter, Quincey P. Morris to Dr. John Seward.

"27 May.

"My dear Jack,--

"You got away last night before I could have a word with you alone. I saw that you wanted to go, and I would sooner have bitten my tongue than called you back before Art; but there was something I meant to say, and here it is.

"When I asked you both to dinner I thought I could carry the thing through without much trouble. I had ordered everything myself, even to the flowers, and had given the waiter such instructions that he must have taken me for a man entertaining his creditors. Then, when I heard your cab stop, I discovered that I had forgotten what I meant to say when you came in. You saved me by asking whether Art was late. It was like you to think first of the fellow who was absent.

"He came before the soup was cold, with that look on his face which made us both get up. I had intended to make a speech; but he took our hands, one in each of his, and for a little while we all stood there like fools. I believe the waiter thought we were saying grace.

"Art's messages were worth hearing. She had told him that he must bring her friends back to her, and that she would be very unhappy if her happiness cost her either of them. He tried to give us her very words, but stopped in the middle. You said, 'Tell her that she shall lose nothing through me.' I managed something of the same sort, though I cannot remember how I put it.

"After that we got through dinner better than I had expected. Art told us how he had gone twice to the house with a speech prepared, and had come away without saying it. That gave us something to laugh at; and when I asked what had become of the speech at last, he said he believed he had dropped it with his gloves.

"I was glad that we drank her health before the waiter cleared the table. There was nothing to be hidden in it. You held your glass as steadily as ever you held a knife when there was work to do, and Art looked at you before he drank.

"Later we fell to talking of old days. I thought at first that Art was trying to help us; but presently he forgot everything except the argument about who had lost the medicine chest. That was the best part of the evening. For ten minutes he was our old Art again, and we could contradict him without remembering that he had won something we had lost.

"Now for what I meant to say. Come and see me when the day's work is over. You need not talk, and I promise not to ask questions. There are two chairs in my room, and a man may sit in one without being obliged to account for himself.

"Yours always,

"QUINCEY P. MORRIS."

Dr. Seward's Diary.

(Kept in phonograph)

27 May.--Went through the wards early, having slept badly. Morris's dinner did me good, though I could not have borne to stay much longer. Holmwood was considerate without making a business of it. That helped us all.

An incident with Renfield deserves recording. He had obtained yesterday's Morning Post from an attendant, and was reading the announcement of Holmwood's engagement when I entered. Before I had spoken to him, he asked:--

"Will Miss Westenra be married soon, doctor?"

I answered that I did not know the date.

"Then you know the lady?"

"Yes."

"Is she rich?"

I told him that this was no concern of his, and asked how he had slept. He folded the newspaper, keeping his finger between the pages, and answered my question with unusual precision. Afterwards he returned to his own.

"I asked because rich people can choose where they will live. When I leave here I should like to live in a large house."

I reminded him that he had complained of the size of this one.

"But I do not choose my room here," he said.

There was justice in the distinction. I asked what sort of room he would choose, expecting some account of the arrangements which have lately occupied him. Instead he described the room he had used as a young man, down to the position of a cupboard and a stain upon the ceiling. His recollection seemed exact; at least, when I questioned him again, he repeated the details without alteration.

The personal question had annoyed me more than it should. I had not spoken to him of Miss Westenra, and for a moment resented hearing her name there. Yet the newspaper lay before me, and his interest was plainly in the means of obtaining a house of his own. I must take care that my private troubles do not determine either my questions or my conclusions.

He asked to keep the paper. Permission given, with instructions to the attendant to note whether he reads it or merely hoards it. He has already complained that the man who gave it to him had cut out an advertisement.

Mina Murray's Journal.

30 May.--I have begun the journal at last, though not in the place or company I had intended. There is no reason why an exercise should wait upon a holiday.

Called on Mr. Hawkins after school. He had nothing further from Jonathan, but showed me the copy of an inquiry which he had sent to Buda-Pest. He had given my address as well as his own, so that an answer might reach one of us without delay. I was glad to see how carefully he had written it. He had included the date of Jonathan's journey and a description of him.

Mr. Hawkins said that foreign business often takes longer than one expects. I know that he meant to comfort me, and I tried to appear comforted. It is the absence of a letter which troubles me. Jonathan would write if he could, even though there were nothing to tell.

On my way home I bought a new ribbon for the typewriter. The woman in the shop asked whether I wanted the same kind as before, and I could not remember what I had bought. I have often thought myself tolerably observant; but I find that when one is waiting for news one may look straight at a thing and take no account of it.

Lucy's letter was waiting when I came in. I read it twice before putting away my things.

Letter, Josef Kreutzer to Miss Mina Murray.

"Hotel Royal, Buda-Pest,

"28 May.

"Madam,--

"I have the honour to reply to the inquiry concerning Mr. Jonathan Harker, of Exeter, which Mr. Peter Hawkins has addressed to this establishment. He directs that any information obtained shall be communicated to you also, and I therefore write by the present post.

"I regret to inform you that the gentleman's return has been delayed. Upon receipt of the inquiry I examined our register and caused a messenger to be sent to the private lodging at which he was reported to be staying. The answer brought to me is that he has injured his ankle, and that the medical gentleman who attends him advises rest before he undertakes a long railway journey.

"There is, I am assured, no occasion for anxiety respecting his health. The injury occurred through a false step upon a rough road. He is able to leave his bed, but walking gives him pain. His landlady expects that he will be fit to travel within a week, unless he should attempt too much before the ankle has recovered.

"Our messenger did not speak with the gentleman, who was resting at the time of the visit. I have instructed him to call again and to ascertain whether a room will be required in this hotel before the departure for England. I shall also endeavour to obtain the particulars of the train by which he proposes to leave.

"I trust that this information will relieve the anxiety which Mr. Hawkins expresses in his communication. We are accustomed to render such assistance to English travellers, and I shall gladly forward any further particulars which reach me.

"Should you desire to address a letter to the gentleman, it may be sent under cover to me at the above address. I shall take care that it is delivered.

"I remain, Madam,

"Your obedient servant,

"JOSEF KREUTZER."

Mina Murray's Journal.

1 June.--The letter from Buda-Pest came this morning. I have copied it here, for I want to preserve everything which concerns Jonathan's journey.

At first I could only see the words which said that there was no occasion for anxiety. I read them to the end of the line over and over again. Then I began to think of the poor ankle, and of Jonathan trying to get about before he ought. He would be very impatient if there were business still to finish. I know how hard it is to persuade him to leave even a small thing incomplete.

But why has he not written? I tried to put the question away whilst I dressed for school, and found myself asking it again before I had fastened my collar.

I took the letter to Mr. Hawkins at luncheon-time. He read it carefully, and asked permission to keep it until he had compared it with the answer sent to himself. That answer, he found, gave the same information in fewer words.

He said that we must obtain a message from Jonathan. I was thankful to hear him say so, for I had been afraid that he would think me unreasonable after such reassuring news. He sent a telegram asking Mr. Kreutzer to see Jonathan himself and to obtain his present address.

I have written a letter to go under cover to the hotel. It was difficult to keep from filling it with questions, but I remembered that an injured man must have enough vexations already. I told him about Lucy, and about my work, and asked him to let me know whether there was anything I could send him.

Letter, Lucy Westenra to Mina Murray.

"2 June.

"My dearest Mina,--

"Your letter came just as Arthur arrived, and I made him wait whilst I read it. He was very patient, though I had promised to be ready when he called. We are both so glad that you have heard of Jonathan. Arthur says that an ankle is a tiresome thing, and that Jonathan must obey his doctor, however much he may wish to get home.

"But I understand your wanting a letter from him. When Arthur is only coming here to luncheon I begin looking at the clock long before there is any reason to expect him. It must be dreadful to wait when one cannot even tell which day to mark upon the calendar.

"I wish you were here. We walked in the park yesterday, and Arthur kept asking which house I liked best of all those we passed. I chose a small one with a bow-window; but when he began to consider it seriously I had to confess that I knew nothing about the rest of the house. I had chosen it because there were flowers in the window. He said that we could put flowers in another window, which was sensible, but did not help me to choose.

"Mamma has begun asking questions about servants and furniture. I had never thought that being happy would involve knowing so much about cupboards. Arthur says he will attend to everything; but I do not mean to let him have all the trouble.

"He told me about the dinner with Mr. Morris and Dr. Seward. I asked a great many questions, and he answered them as well as he could. They have sent me such kind messages that I am ashamed of having been afraid to meet them again. Dr. Seward called yesterday, and we talked quite easily after the first few minutes. I hope he found it easy too.

"Come to us as soon as your work permits. Write the very moment Jonathan sends you his address. I shall think of him behaving badly about his ankle until you tell me otherwise.

"Your loving,

"LUCY."

Mina Murray's Journal.

4 June.--No message yet. Mr. Hawkins says that the hotel must allow time for its messenger to find the gentleman at home. I had thought of a telegram as something which brought an answer almost whilst one waited; but it cannot make the person at the other end ready to reply.

I have put aside the work which I shall show Jonathan when he comes. There are several pages of shorthand, and a letter which I typed without a single mistake. I had meant to leave them upon the table, where he would see them at once; but I have put them in the drawer instead. He may be tired after the journey.

To-morrow I shall ask Mr. Hawkins whether Mr. Kreutzer has answered.

Telegram, Josef Kreutzer to Miss Mina Murray.

"5 June.

"Earlier information mistaken. Delayed traveller is another man. No news of Jonathan Harker. Have informed Hawkins."

Lady Russell came to Kellynch the following morning with a paper in her hand, and a tolerably firm resolution not to be discouraged by the first objection. Mr Shepherd was already there. He had brought papers also; but his were folded away in his pocket, and he seemed much more disposed to hear what Lady Russell had to propose than to claim the distinction of speaking first. Sir Walter received them with the civility due to persons who were to relieve him from an inconvenience; Elizabeth placed herself beside him; and Anne, who had been desired to fetch a writing-box, remained at a little distance from the table, without being desired to do any thing more.

Lady Russell had considered the subject with much care. She had wished to reconcile the claims of creditors with the claims of Kellynch Hall; and if her regard for the latter had sometimes made her less severe than the former required, she had at least been severe enough to anticipate opposition.

“I believe,” said she, laying her paper before Sir Walter, “that you may remain here, and discharge every debt in seven years, if you will consent to these alterations. The establishment must be reduced by two servants; the carriage horses must be fewer; and the great dinners, for the present, entirely given up. I have allowed a smaller sum for London, and a fixed sum for every other expense. Whatever remains must be paid regularly to Mr Shepherd for your creditors.”

Sir Walter looked at the paper, but did not take it.

“Two servants! With this house? And fewer horses! Lady Russell, you cannot have considered what you are saying. We are very little in London now. Elizabeth will tell you how little. As for dinners, nobody can accuse us of entertaining too much. We have people here whom it would be impossible to neglect.”

“There may be some inconvenience at first; but seven years would restore your independence.”

“Seven years of such a life would be a very poor return for independence. No, I cannot consent to it. I reject the whole arrangement. It would make Kellynch ridiculous.”

Lady Russell coloured, less at the rejection than at the manner of it. She had expected objections to particular articles, and had prepared to yield a little upon each; but she was not prepared to have the whole dismissed before any one article had been fairly examined. She withdrew the paper, and Mr Shepherd, after a short silence, thought it time to produce his own.

His scheme had the advantage of requiring less immediate sacrifice. He had ventured, he said, to take a longer period for the payment of the debts. Ten years might be allowed, if the principal creditors could be satisfied of a steady annual reduction; and he had good reason to hope that they would be satisfied. The carriage might be retained as it was; the servants need not be dismissed; but no vacant place in the household should be filled without consideration. A smaller purchase of wine, fewer occasional entertainments, and a strict limitation of the annual stay in London would do much. Above all, no new account ought to be opened until the old accounts had begun to diminish.

“I would undertake the troublesome part myself, Sir Walter. The tradespeople should apply to me. You would have only to keep within the sums here set down.”

“And submit to have every thing I ordered questioned by my own agent? I beg your pardon, Mr Shepherd, but that is what it comes to. If my carriage wanted repair, or Elizabeth wanted any thing proper for her appearance, we should be told that the sum was exceeded. I cannot live in that manner. Your plan is quite as impossible as Lady Russell’s. There must be some other way.”

Mr Shepherd folded his paper again. He had made the restrictions as light as he dared, and had depended much upon the length of time allowed for them to become familiar. To hear ten years pronounced intolerable by a man who could not pay the expenses of one, was discouraging; but his countenance retained its habitual readiness to be pleased.

Anne had listened with a degree of pain which made silence increasingly difficult. She knew that the opinions most likely to be useful were the least likely to be welcome; yet, while every body waited for some other way to be discovered, she ventured to speak.

“Would it not be better to allow ourselves less time, and to give up more at once? If we remain here, surely we might give up London altogether for a few years. Two horses would be sufficient for the carriage; and there are some which might be sold immediately. We could have no company to dinner, except such as could dine with us without any additional expense. If every purchase which can be delayed were delayed, and we each had a smaller allowance, I think a much larger sum might be paid every year. Mr Shepherd would know whether four years were possible. I should be very willing to have nothing for myself beyond what was necessary.”

“Four years!” Sir Walter began; but Elizabeth spoke before he could proceed.

“I think Anne is right. We ought to do it.”

There was not a person in the room who was not surprised. Mr Shepherd’s hand stopped upon the fastening of his pocket-book. Lady Russell looked at Elizabeth with an expression which she could not immediately govern; and Anne, who had expected to be interrupted, had never expected such an interruption. Sir Walter turned towards his eldest daughter, almost doubting that he had heard her.

“Give up London, Elizabeth?”

“For the present, yes. If these bills must be paid, they must be paid. I would rather stay here, and know when the trouble was to end, than go to London with half the money we ought to have, and be obliged to consider every thing. We could receive nobody there as we should wish; and I am sure I do not desire to go merely to be seen practising economy.”

“But the horses, and the dinners?”

“We can refuse invitations ourselves, and then there can be no complaint. We should be understood to be living quietly. Anne’s plan appears to me much the best.”

Elizabeth had not suddenly acquired a taste for self-denial. She had, however, been made to feel that the present difficulty was not to be dismissed by dismissing the person who explained it. There were bills which concerned herself, and applications which she could no longer put aside without uneasiness. A fixed period of privation had something less humiliating in it than a succession of petty refusals. She could submit to give up a season; she could not bear to purchase every pleasure by a separate acknowledgement that she could ill afford it.

Sir Walter saw no such distinction.

“I am astonished at you. You would shut yourself up here for four years, and allow all your acquaintance to forget you. Anne may have no objection to it. Her situation is different. But you, Elizabeth! I had expected more judgement. Neither this plan nor either of the others shall be adopted. I will not consent to any of them.”

Anne could say no more. Elizabeth’s support had given her a moment of hope, and its failure was the more painful for having been so unexpected. Lady Russell attempted to explain that retirement need not be absolute, and that the family’s consequence could suffer nothing from an honourable discharge of its obligations; but Sir Walter would not listen to an argument which made consequence depend upon paying bills.

Mr Shepherd had been considering the extent of this refusal. There was one expedient which he had not yet named, and which, having now so little to lose by naming it, he introduced with all the caution he could command.

“If remaining at Kellynch necessarily involves an establishment which cannot be reduced, there may be a means of deriving a temporary advantage from the house itself. A family of fortune might be glad to take it furnished for a term of years. The rent would be considerable, and with a suitable tenant—”

“A what?”

Mr Shepherd repeated the word, less distinctly.

“Let my house! Put another person into Kellynch Hall! I desire that the word ‘tenant’ may never be spoken again in my presence. Never, Mr Shepherd. I am surprised that you should have used it. There is no occasion for us to discuss such a proposal. I shall remain in my own house.”

Mr Shepherd bowed. He had no wish to establish a right of discussion at the expense of his right of entrance; and the expedient was relinquished as completely as Sir Walter could desire.

The consultation had now produced four proposals, and no agreement. Sir Walter considered that his friends had been unfortunate in their ideas; his friends considered that he had been unfortunate in every thing but his opportunities of refusing them. Elizabeth was displeased without being inclined to withdraw her opinion, and Anne had returned to the employment for which she had originally been summoned. She put away the pens which nobody had used.

Before the party separated, a letter was brought in from Uppercross. It was directed to Anne; and Elizabeth, who recognised Mary’s hand, observed that there would probably be something the matter with her. Anne opened it with more concern.

“MY DEAR ANNE,

“I have been very unwell all the morning, and nobody seems to think any thing of it. Charles says he hopes I shall be better after dinner, but he has gone out, though I told him how very low I was, and I have not seen a creature since breakfast. My head aches so much that I can hardly write. I am sure, if you could see me, you would be alarmed.

“I wish you would come to me to-morrow. There can be nothing to keep you at home, and it is very hard that I should have neither of my sisters with me when I am ill. Elizabeth never comes unless there is a party at the Great House; but I do not expect any thing from her. You might come early, and stay with me some days. I am sure I shall not be fit to be left alone.

“Mrs Musgrove has sent to ask whether we shall dine there, which is very extraordinary, after my having told her yesterday that I was not equal to any exertion. I suppose they think I can always do what suits them. Pray do not disappoint me. I shall expect you before breakfast is quite over, if the carriage can be spared.

“Your affectionate sister,

“MARY MUSGROVE.”

Anne read the letter through, and gave the substance of it when Sir Walter enquired what Mary wanted. Its complaints were familiar enough to lessen alarm, but not to destroy compassion. Mary was often unhappy when she was not ill; and Anne had long ceased to think that a distinction which relieved every body else ought entirely to relieve herself.

“She always wants somebody,” said Elizabeth. “I dare say she will be quite well when Anne gets there.”

“Uppercross cannot be very amusing,” said Sir Walter. “I am not surprised that she feels low. She should take more exercise.”

Anne thought her presence might be of use, and said so; but nobody attended much to the observation. The letter had interrupted a disagreeable subject, and Sir Walter was willing to prolong the interruption. He enquired whether Mrs Musgrove still wore the same caps, and had scarcely obtained an answer before he began upon the difficulty of dressing properly at her age.

Mr Shepherd took the first opportunity of going away. He left his papers with Lady Russell, upon her asking for them; but Sir Walter desired to retain neither. There was some satisfaction to be found in not having the rejected plans on his table. He requested that Mr Shepherd would consider the subject further, and Mr Shepherd promised that he would, with a gravity which did not encourage Anne to believe that further consideration would furnish a fifth proposal.

Lady Russell remained a little longer, and found an opportunity of speaking to Anne apart.

“You must not be discouraged, my dear. Your sister’s opinion may yet have weight. I am very glad that you spoke.”

Anne was glad to have spoken, but could not persuade herself that Elizabeth’s influence would accomplish what Elizabeth’s assent had failed to do. She had seen her father offended by the agreement itself. He liked to have his eldest daughter determine for him when her determination was his own; upon this occasion he had discovered an independence which could only be disagreeable.

Lady Russell would willingly have kept Anne near her. There was comfort in knowing that one person at Kellynch understood the necessity of what she had urged; but Mary’s request was reasonable enough to be supported, whatever might be thought of the manner of making it.

“If you find her better than you expect, the visit may still be useful. She listens to you more than she is aware of.”

Anne smiled a little. She could not claim much success in making Mary listen; but she was grateful for the encouragement, and promised to send Lady Russell an account of her sister soon after her arrival.

At dinner the plans were mentioned only to be blamed. Elizabeth said little. She had no wish to expose her agreement with Anne to further notice, but she did not retract it; and when her father complained of the unreasonable sacrifices which had been required of him, she answered that she did not know how the debts were otherwise to be paid. This was not a satisfactory answer. Sir Walter changed the subject, and the rest of the meal passed without an approach to any decision.

It was evening before Anne was alone in her room. Mary’s letter lay before her, beside a small parcel of things which she had begun to collect almost without a settled intention of using them. She now resolved to go. She could be ready early; the distance was short; and whatever comfort her company might afford ought not to be withheld because the need of it had been expressed ungraciously.

She folded the letter and completed her little preparations. No provision had been made for the debts, no expense had been given up, and the morning’s consultation had left her father determined only upon what he would not do. She could not stay to any purpose that she understood. At Uppercross there would at least be somebody who wished for her; and she would go to Mary in the morning.

By the time Eve reached the street the rain had stopped. A pale sun was examining Shaftesbury Avenue with the air of a visitor who has been brought to the wrong address, and people who had lately been cowering in doorways were beginning to walk about with the confidence of those who have always maintained that it would clear up.

Eve looked at the umbrella. It was a handsome umbrella, and she had become attached to it. Nevertheless, there are limits to the things which a girl can accept from a young man who has crossed a street and put them into her hand without a word of explanation. She turned towards Dover Street.

The porter at the Drones Club received her with that guarded expression which porters at clubs reserve for young women who appear unexpectedly before luncheon.

"I want to return this umbrella," said Eve.

The porter's expression softened. Whatever else she might be contemplating, she was adding to the club's stock of umbrellas.

"A gentleman lent it to me this morning. A very tall gentleman with an eyeglass."

"Yes, miss."

"Would you give it back to him?"

"Certainly, miss."

"And could I write him a note?"

The porter supplied paper and an envelope. Eve wrote:

"With grateful thanks for the loan of the umbrella. E. H."

She considered adding that her hat owed its continued existence to him, but decided that this would be excessive. The porter asked her name, received it, and promised that the note should reach the gentleman. Then a telephone rang somewhere behind him, and Eve went away while he was explaining to an unseen inquirer that the Honourable Mr. Walderwick had not yet arrived.

The Honourable Mr. Walderwick arrived twenty minutes later.

He was a round young man with a pink face and a strong sense of property. His first action on entering the club was to ascertain that his umbrella was in its accustomed place. His second was to discover that it was wet. His third, after a short conversation with the cloak-room attendant, was to proceed to the smoking-room.

Psmith was there, reading a paper.

"I say, Psmith!"

Psmith lowered the paper and surveyed him kindly.

"Ah, Comrade Walderwick. You appear disturbed. Sit down and tell me all."

"Did you take my umbrella?"

"Let us approach this matter without heat."

"Well, did you?"

Psmith folded the paper. He did this carefully, as if the question had reminded him that newspapers deserved better treatment than they generally received.

"What would you consider a fair price for it?"

"What?"

"Your umbrella. Have you ever thought of selling it?"

"No."

"That is where we differ. I have frequently thought of buying it."

"You've been using it. It's wet."

"Twenty pounds," said Psmith.

Walderwick, who had opened his mouth to continue the indictment, left it open. There are remarks which cannot be dealt with immediately. They require to be taken away and examined.

"Twenty pounds?"

"Cash."

"For my umbrella?"

"For your umbrella."

"But it only cost thirty shillings."

"You must not allow your private arrangements with the retail trade to influence this transaction. I offer twenty pounds. You accept. We shake hands, and the matter passes into history."

Walderwick sat down. He had come to the smoking-room prepared to be angry, and the discovery that anger was going to cost him eighteen pounds ten shillings had unsettled him.

"Are you rotting?"

Psmith produced a pocket-book.

"Count these," he said, placing four five-pound notes on the table. "You will find that the total is as advertised."

Walderwick counted them. He then counted them again, for it was conceivable that some of the notes might have disappeared during the first operation.

"I say, you must be an ass."

"The opinion has been expressed before. Have you the umbrella with you?"

"It's in the cloak-room."

"Then kindly inform the custodian that the ownership has changed. I should dislike to have him inflict another purchaser upon you. You might become avaricious."

Walderwick rose, holding the notes.

"Well, if you really mean it."

"I do."

"It's a jolly good umbrella."

"I have always said so."

Walderwick went out. Psmith resumed his paper. His face wore the peaceful expression of a man who has settled a difficult question without the assistance of a committee.

At three o'clock that afternoon Eve presented herself at the hotel in Piccadilly where Lord Emsworth had arranged to interview her.

She had brought a small notebook and several specimen catalogue cards. These she had prepared with care, for, although Freddie had spoken of the appointment as practically settled, Freddie was not a man whose assurances one could safely deposit at a bank. She wished to show that she knew something about the work.

Lord Emsworth was standing at the window of his sitting-room, looking down at the traffic. He turned when she entered.

"Ah!" he said. "Yes?"

"I am Miss Halliday."

"Halliday. Quite so. How do you do? Sit down, sit down."

He sat down himself and regarded her with vague benevolence.

"You have had experience?"

"Some. I helped my father with his books."

"Ah, yes. Very useful."

Eve waited.

Lord Emsworth waited also. He had reached that agreeable point in an interview at which, having established that the other person has had experience, one may reasonably hope that something further will happen without one's assistance.

"Perhaps you would like to see these," said Eve, laying her cards on the writing-table.

"Certainly, certainly."

He looked at them, but without putting on his glasses.

"The great thing," he said suddenly, "is slugs."

Eve blinked.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Slugs. One cannot be too careful. They get at the young plants. Beach tells me that bran is excellent, but I have never found it much use myself."

Eve felt that there must be some connection between slugs and library catalogues which had escaped her. She searched for it in silence.

"And cuttings," continued Lord Emsworth. "What do you do with your cuttings?"

"If they seem worth keeping, I generally put them in a book."

His lordship stared.

"In a book?"

"My father used to keep them in envelopes, but they were always getting lost."

"Dear me! I should imagine they would die."

"I meant newspaper cuttings."

"Oh, newspaper cuttings!"

There was another silence. Eve broke it.

"I came about cataloguing your library."

The effect of this announcement was remarkable. Lord Emsworth straightened himself and looked almost awake.

"The library! Of course. Of course, of course. I was thinking of somebody else altogether. There is a man coming to see me about the gardens. Or I am going to see him. Baxter arranged it."

"I brought some specimens of the sort of catalogue I thought you might want."

"Excellent. Excellent. Where are my glasses?"

They were on the writing-table beside the inkstand. Lord Emsworth reached for them. His cuff caught the inkstand, and the interview entered upon its second phase.

There was a sharp clink, followed by a spreading black pool. Eve snatched at her notebook. His lordship snatched at the cards. Between them they contrived to distribute the ink over everything which had hitherto escaped it.

"Oh, dear!" said Lord Emsworth.

Eve examined a card on which she had written out a model entry for a volume of essays. The essays had vanished. Only the date of publication remained, surrounded by black water.

"I'm afraid these won't be much use now."

"Most unfortunate. Most unfortunate."

He dabbed at the table with a sheet of hotel writing-paper and transferred a substantial part of the disaster to his fingers.

"I hope it hasn't got on your dress."

"Only my sleeve."

"Dear me!"

Eve put down the ruined card. She had spent an hour making it, and for a moment the sight of it weakened her usual cheerfulness. Then she looked at Lord Emsworth, who was attempting to clean his thumb with the wettest part of the writing-paper, and began to laugh.

His lordship looked relieved.

"Baxter will tell you all about the library," he said. "He understands these things."

"Then I am to come?"

"Certainly. Certainly."

"I thought perhaps you might want to ask me some questions."

"Oh, no," said Lord Emsworth, with unmistakable sincerity. "No, no."

"Would you mind signing a line to say that I am engaged? Miss Clarkson asked me to get something in writing."

"Delighted."

On the one surviving clean page of her notebook Eve wrote a short statement. Lord Emsworth signed it, this time without overturning anything.

"You will find Baxter a most capable fellow," he said as she rose. "He remembers everything."

Eve looked at the table.

"I shall remember this," she said.

"Eh? Oh, yes. Most unfortunate."

She left him ringing for somebody to bring a cloth.

It was the need for a new notebook which took Eve into a stationer's shop a little later. She had selected one and was asking for blotting-paper when a voice beside her said:

"I want a pencil which will write. I mention this because the last one appeared to have been designed for some other purpose."

Eve turned.

The tall young man of Dover Street was standing at the counter. He now wore a hat, but the monocle was there, and the grave manner, and the general suggestion that any establishment he entered ought to feel that its luck had changed.

"Oh!" said Eve.

Psmith looked at her.

"Good afternoon."

"Then it was you."

He glanced at the assistant, who was opening a box of pencils.

"One is seldom safe in making definite statements before the evidence has been sifted."

"You gave me an umbrella this morning."

"Did somebody give you an umbrella? How pleasant."

"You know perfectly well that you did."

Psmith examined a pencil.

"There is a tendency nowadays to discuss these matters in public. I deplore it."

Eve laughed.

"Are you going to deny it?"

"I am going to try this pencil."

He made a mark upon the sheet of paper provided by the assistant, inspected it through his monocle, and nodded.

"A promising beginning. But we must not be carried away. The last one started like that."

"I returned the umbrella to your club," said Eve.

"An excellent place to return an umbrella."

"And left a note."

"The affair seems to have been conducted with great thoroughness."

"You won't even let me thank you?"

"I should be sorry to restrict your freedom of speech. If you feel that a few words would relieve you, proceed."

Eve looked at him for a moment, then turned back to the counter.

"I think I shall keep them," she said.

"A prudent decision. Words of gratitude, like everything else, may become more expensive."

The assistant handed her the notebook. As she took it, the black mark on her sleeve became visible.

Psmith regarded it with interest.

"Have you been engaged in journalism?"

"No. I have been interviewed."

"By an octopus?"

"By my employer."

"An employer should restrain these impulses. However strongly he feels about a candidate, ink ought to be excluded."

"He upset it."

"Upon you?"

"Upon some catalogue cards I had brought to show him. Then we both tried to save them. This was my share of the rescue."

"And the appointment?"

"I got it."

Psmith inclined his head.

"I congratulate you. I also congratulate the employer. His methods of selection are unusual, but the result appears satisfactory."

Eve found herself laughing again. The ink on her sleeve had annoyed her considerably during the walk to the shop. It now seemed less important.

"What sort of catalogue?"

"A library catalogue."

"Ah! Books."

"You have heard of them?"

"I have even read some. Not recently, perhaps, but I should know one if I saw it."

The assistant had begun to wrap Psmith's pencil. He watched the operation with approval.

"I myself have been discussing employment this afternoon," he said. "At a bureau. It was suggested that I might become a tutor."

"Why didn't you?"

"There was a boy attached to the post."

"There generally is."

"Precisely. I pointed out that, if the family could see their way to dispensing with the boy, I should be happy to consider the matter. Negotiations then broke down."

"You can't expect a salary for doing nothing."

"I have always hoped that somebody would take a broader view."

They left the shop together. The sun had acquired confidence and was now shining upon Piccadilly as if it had been there all day. Eve held her parcel against the damaged sleeve.

"I must go this way," she said at the corner.

Psmith stopped.

"May I carry the parcel?"

"No, thank you. It weighs practically nothing."

"Then the offer must be judged by the intention. I should have made it just as readily had you purchased a dictionary."

She smiled.

"Good-bye. And I still think it was you."

"Opinions are the privilege of a free people."

"You are very obstinate."

"I have been told that it may prove useful in later life."

Eve went round the corner. Psmith stood for a moment where she had left him. Then he took the pencil out of its wrapping and looked at it, as though surprised that this small object should have been responsible for so agreeable an interruption to the afternoon.

He returned to the Drones in the evening.

The smoking-room was empty. Those members who had not gone out to dine had gone in to dine, and a waiter was removing the last abandoned tea-cup. Psmith settled himself in a chair beside the window. The umbrella, which he had caused to be brought up from the cloak-room, lay on the chair beside him.

Presently the porter entered.

"A note was left with that umbrella this morning, sir."

Psmith took the envelope.

"The young lady asked me to give it to the gentleman who lent it to her. I've been keeping it at the desk."

Psmith read the brief message.

"A model of composition," he said. "Everything necessary, and nothing to fatigue the reader."

"Yes, sir."

"Did the young lady happen to leave her name?"

"Yes, sir. Miss Eve Halliday."

Psmith looked up.

"Miss Eve Halliday?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you."

The porter withdrew. Alone in the smoking-room, Psmith laid the note on the table and rested the umbrella across his knees. Walderwick had said that it cost thirty shillings. It was extraordinary how little some people knew about values.

Two nights later I was sitting at my desk, with the window open upon the garden, when the first of the falling stars came. I had been correcting a passage in one of my papers, and for some seconds the light upon the page seemed to me merely an alteration in the lamp. Then the shadow of my hand sprang black across the manuscript, and I looked up.

Above the trees towards Chertsey a greenish streak crossed the sky. It was extraordinarily bright, and appeared to broaden as it descended, so that at its lower end it had something of the shape of a drop of burning liquid. For an instant I saw every leaf of the pear tree outside my window, and the white palings at the end of the garden. Then the light vanished behind the trees. I had scarcely risen when a heavy concussion shook the window and set the chimney of my lamp rattling.

My wife called to me from upstairs.

"Was that thunder?"

"A falling star," I answered. "A very big one."

She came down in her dressing gown, and we stood together at the window. There was no further light. A dog began to bark beyond the garden, and presently another answered it. I remember that a little moth, disturbed by my movement, continued to beat against the shade of the lamp while we listened for a second report.

"It must have fallen quite near," she said.

I agreed, though I had no clear notion of the distance. The brilliance of the thing had destroyed all judgement of its size. I went out to the gate, where I found our neighbour looking over his hedge. He had heard the concussion, but had seen only the illumination of his bedroom wall. We looked along the road in both directions. There was nothing to be seen except the usual dark trees and a light in an upper window farther down.

I thought for a moment of going towards Chertsey, but there were several lanes and fields between us and the place where the light had disappeared, and I should have had little chance of finding anything in that darkness. My wife waited at the door until I returned. We went upstairs, and before I slept I heard a cart pass along the road, its wheels grinding with the accustomed deliberation. That familiar sound did much to reduce the extraordinary appearance I had witnessed to the dimensions of an ordinary incident.

At breakfast next morning a boy who brought us vegetables told us that something had fallen into the old gravel working on the Chertsey side of Ottershaw. His father had been there before six, and had found the water steaming. The boy understood that a great stone lay in it. He was anxious to finish his round and go there himself.

"I shall come with you," my wife said, as I rose from the table.

She had taken the account more seriously than I had expected. I was already thinking of a specimen for Ogilvy, and of the possibility of seeing the interior of a meteorite before weather or handling had altered it. It did not occur to either of us that there could be any difficulty in approaching the place. We put on our walking shoes and went out a little after seven.

The morning was bright and warm. Dew still lay upon the grass beside the road, and the shadows of the hedges stretched across the dust. We passed a labourer who directed us to a gap in the fence. Beyond this a cart track led through a low meadow to the abandoned working. I knew the place slightly. Water had gathered in its deeper part, and reeds grew along one edge, but the nearer bank had remained bare, with loose gravel and patches of yellow sand.

We saw the steam before we reached the pit. It rose in a broad white cloud above the meadow and dispersed slowly in the still air. At first I thought the object itself was giving off smoke. Then, as we came down the track, I saw water shining beneath it and understood the boy's description.

The farther bank had been torn away. Sand and gravel lay scattered over the grass, and several roots projected from a raw hollow in the slope. In the middle of the pool, nearer that damaged bank than our own, lay an enormous dark mass, half submerged. Water reached nearly halfway up its rounded sides. Its greater length pointed obliquely towards us, and one end rested upon a heap of gravel that had been driven into the pool.

It was perhaps twenty feet long. I could make no satisfactory estimate of its breadth, for the steam continually passed across it, concealing one part while it revealed another. The upper surface was a dull grey, with black patches and reddish stains. Here and there it looked as though some thin coating had run down the sides and hardened. I had expected a jagged rock, and this smooth, elongated form surprised me.

My wife stopped beside me.

"It is bigger than a carriage."

The comparison was a useful one. Until she made it I had been occupied with its appearance rather than its actual bulk. A little bubbling sound came from the water along its sides, and at intervals the steam thickened so much that the whole mass disappeared. Nothing else moved in the pit.

There were only four people there when we arrived. One was a gardener carrying a spade, and two were boys. The fourth, standing below us upon a shelf of sand, was Ogilvy. His trousers were muddy about the knees, and his hat lay beside a notebook on the bank. He looked up when I called his name.

"Come round this way," he said. "You can see the end of it better."

We made our way along the bank. Ogilvy was flushed and excited, but he had the air of a man who had already settled the principal question and was impatient with those who had not.

"A meteorite?" I asked.

"An ordinary meteorite," he said. "An extraordinary size, of course. I should think there can have been very few falls to compare with it."

I looked again at the long grey back.

"It has an odd shape for a stone."

"It is probably chiefly iron."

"But even iron does not usually fall in that shape."

"You have seen very few iron meteorites," he answered. "And none after a fall of this magnitude. We cannot judge the whole form from the part above water."

He pointed to the disturbed bank and explained how the mass must have struck the slope, carried a quantity of gravel before it, and come to rest in the flooded bottom. Much of what appeared to me a regular outline might, he said, be an effect of the water and the sand beneath it. He spoke with such assurance that for a little while I accepted his explanation. Yet when the steam cleared again I found myself staring at the same long curve.

"That surface looks worked," I said.

"Fused," said Ogilvy. "There is a considerable difference."

He stooped, recovered his notebook, and showed me a rough drawing of the position in which the object lay. His pencil had marked it as an irregular oval. The drawing seemed to dispose of the very peculiarity that troubled me.

"What do you suppose it to be?" he asked.

I hesitated. The flashes upon Mars were still fresh in my memory, but I cannot pretend that I had then formed any definite connexion between them and this thing in the water.

"Could anything have been sent here?" I said at last.

"Sent?"

"Across space."

He looked at me with an expression I had seen before when some popular speculation annoyed him.

"You must have evidence before you introduce intention into a natural occurrence. Stones have fallen from the sky as long as men have kept records. Here is another stone. We shall learn a great deal from it when it is cool enough to examine."

"But its shape?"

"Which we cannot yet see," he said.

My wife had listened without speaking. She now asked how long it would take to cool. Ogilvy admitted that he could not tell her. There was an immense quantity of heat in so large a body, and the water might boil about it for many hours. He advised us to keep upon the bank. The sand below was loose, and the pit might have been deepened by the fall.

Meanwhile the boys had gone away, and others began to arrive. A man came across the meadow with a milk can, stood for a minute looking, and set the can down. Two women followed the cart track. Before eight there were perhaps twenty of us. People asked the same questions as they reached the edge, and those who had been there ten minutes answered with the confidence of witnesses.

One man declared that he had seen the thing strike. On questioning him, I found that he had seen a light through his curtains and afterwards heard the noise. Another said that the water had risen over the meadow. There were wet marks upon the lower grass which supported this statement, though he himself had not come until daylight.

I remember my wife drawing my attention to a small fish stranded among the weeds above the ordinary water level. She wished to put it back, but could not reach it without descending the damaged slope. We were still considering this when a man in his shirt sleeves climbed down at the opposite side.

He was a broad, active fellow, with his boots in one hand. Someone called to him that the water was hot.

"Not here it isn't," he answered.

He had entered at the shallower end, where a narrow runnel brought water into the pool. He waded towards the heap of gravel beneath the nearer end of the object, testing his footing as he went. Ogilvy shouted that he ought to come back, but the man merely looked over his shoulder and laughed.

There was at that point a grey projection just above the water. Whether it was part of the mass or a coating upon it I could not determine. The man put one foot upon the gravel, balanced himself, and laid his right hand flat against the projection.

His cry was so sudden that my wife caught my arm. He snatched back his hand and nearly fell, splashing into deeper water before he recovered his footing. For a moment he stood with his arm held out before him, staring at his palm. Then he scrambled towards the bank, swearing and calling for someone to help him.

The gardener went down with his spade and let him take hold of the handle. Between them they gained the upper edge. The man's palm was red, with a whitish patch at the base of the fingers. He had touched the surface for scarcely a second.

My wife took out her handkerchief.

"There is cold water in that little stream," she said.

She made him hold his hand in the runnel while she wetted the handkerchief. His laughter had gone out of him. He sat upon the grass with his boots beside him, and repeated that it had not looked hot. One of the onlookers said that he should have known better. My wife turned upon this person with a sharpness that surprised me, and he moved away.

Ogilvy had become very angry. He spoke of the folly of touching anything that had so recently passed through the atmosphere, and told the crowd that the grey colour meant nothing. The gardener planted his spade across the easiest descent, and for a time it kept people back. The burned man presently left with a companion, holding the wet handkerchief against his palm. Several newcomers stopped him upon the track, and his account brought them the rest of the way at a run.

After this the gathering increased much faster. By ten o'clock people stood along most of the accessible bank. A few had brought sticks with which they proposed to fish fragments out of the water. Ogilvy stopped them, and obtained the gardener's help in keeping a space clear. There was talk of draining the pit. Someone said that a pump could be borrowed, but no one could agree where the water was to go.

A shopkeeper arrived with a newspaper folded under his arm. He asked Ogilvy whether the object was valuable, and seemed dissatisfied when Ogilvy explained that its value lay in what an examination might teach us. He then asked who owned the meadow. This question interested several people who had shown little concern about the origin of the thing, and a long discussion began concerning the rights of the landowner.

I tried to make a drawing. From where I stood the exposed portion seemed more regular than ever, but every fresh cloud of steam compelled me to stop. Ogilvy came and looked over my shoulder.

"You have made it too symmetrical," he said.

I handed him the pencil. He altered one side of the outline, then waited for the vapour to pass. When the object became visible he rubbed out his alteration and gave the pencil back.

My wife had grown tired of standing. We found a place upon the higher bank where she could sit, but the crowd soon extended behind us. People crossed and recrossed the spot, and a boy almost trod upon her skirt. The sun was now high, and the little shelter afforded by the hedge had disappeared.

I suggested that she should go home.

"And you?"

"I should like to stay until they have decided what to do."

"You may have a long wait."

That was true enough. Ogilvy had sent a boy to fetch someone who knew the working and could advise about the water. He still expected an examination to be possible before evening. I wanted to be present when the whole outline could be seen.

My wife looked towards the pit, where a fresh group had begun asking whether it was safe to approach. Then she rose. I persuaded her to take the path through the meadow, which was less crowded than the cart track, and promised to follow when there was something definite to report. She reminded me that I had eaten nothing since breakfast.

I walked with her to the gap in the fence. As she passed through it, I looked at my watch. It was twelve. She turned once beyond the hedge and raised her hand, and then the bend of the path took her out of sight. I went back to the bank, where people were still arriving, and found my place among them.

It was Mrs. Medlock's hand upon her shoulder which woke her. The railway carriage had stopped, and the window was black except where a lamp outside shone upon the wet glass.

"Here we are," said Mrs. Medlock. "Wake up and mind your things."

Mary sat upright and looked about her. She had been asleep so long that she did not at first remember where she was. Then she saw the purple flowers trembling on Mrs. Medlock's bonnet, and remembered everything she did not like.

A porter opened the door. Beyond him, under the station roof, stood a tall man in a dark traveling coat. One shoulder was higher than the other, and his head was bent a little forward. He was looking into the carriage.

Mrs. Medlock gave a start.

"Mr. Craven, sir!" she exclaimed. "I didn't expect you."

"The carriage is here," he said.

His voice was low, and he spoke as if he wished the words to be finished as soon as possible.

"This is Miss Mary, sir," said Mrs. Medlock.

Mary looked at him without speaking. She had thought a great deal about what a hunchback might be like, and she was almost disappointed to find that he was a man in an ordinary coat, with a pale face and dark eyes. He did not look pleased to see her. But neither did he look angry. It seemed to Mary that he scarcely saw her at all, though his eyes rested upon her for a moment.

"Come," he said.

That was all he said to her.

She got down, and Mrs. Medlock followed with the bags. The station was a small one, and the rain made a rushing sound beyond its roof. A carriage stood close to the entrance, with lamps which showed the shining backs of the horses. Mr. Craven waited while they got in, and then took the seat opposite them.

Mary had expected that her uncle would ask her questions. Grown people generally asked children questions when they first saw them, even if they did not listen to the answers. She had prepared herself to dislike his questions, and now she found that she disliked his not asking any.

Mrs. Medlock tucked a rug about her knees.

"It's a good way yet," she said.

Mr. Craven turned his face toward the window, and the carriage began to move.

For some time Mary could see lights in houses and the dark shapes of roofs. Then there were fewer lights, and presently none at all. The wheels made a different sound upon the road, and the carriage rocked more than it had done before. The rain struck the windows in little sudden showers, as if some one threw it against them.

"Are we on the moor?" Mary asked.

"Yes," answered Mrs. Medlock. "This is the moor."

Mary looked out, but there was nothing to see beyond the pale patch made by the carriage lamp. She could not understand how a place could be so large and have nothing in it. Even the darkness seemed different from the darkness she had known in India. There, something had always been near her, a veranda, a tree, or a servant asleep outside a door. Here she felt that if the carriage went away there would be nothing near her at all.

She glanced at her uncle. He sat quite still, and she could not tell whether his eyes were open or shut.

Then the horses stopped so suddenly that Mrs. Medlock caught hold of the seat.

"What is it?" she said.

The coachman called to some one outside. Another voice answered, but the wind carried most of the words away.

Mrs. Medlock lowered the window a little.

"What's in the road?" she demanded.

"A cart's upset, ma'am. They've got to shift it."

Mary leaned forward. Through the glass she could see a lantern moving, and presently its light showed a wheel sticking up in a queer way. A man was stooping beside it. There were sacks lying across the road.

"How long shall we have to wait?" she asked.

Mrs. Medlock was listening to the men and did not answer.

Mary had grown tired of sitting still. She had also become curious about the black emptiness outside. The carriage door was beside her, and she put her hand upon its fastening.

"I am going to get out," she said.

"What?" said Mrs. Medlock, turning from the window.

But Mary had already opened the door and put one foot upon the step. The wind caught her skirt and blew it against her legs. She climbed down before Mrs. Medlock could stop her.

The ground was not like a floor, or even like the paths she had walked upon. Her shoe sank into something soft at the edge of the road. When she drew it back there was a cold trickle about her ankle.

She stood on the moor in the dark.

The carriage lamp showed a little wet grass and some low, rough bushes. Beyond them was the blackness, and above it the sky, which seemed scarcely any lighter. The wind came straight against her face. It was so strong that she had to set her feet apart to keep herself steady.

For the first time she understood that the moor was not merely a name for something one passed in a carriage. It was a place she could stand upon, and it stretched away where she could not see. She did not like it, but she wanted to see a little more.

She took one step toward a bush and touched it. Something pricked her finger.

"Miss Mary!" called Mrs. Medlock. "Get back into this carriage this instant! Do you want to be lost?"

"I am not lost," said Mary. "I am here."

"And here you'll not stay. Come along."

Mrs. Medlock had come down upon the step. She took Mary's arm and brought her back to the door.

Mary had been outside scarcely a minute, but her face was wet, and her fingers were so cold that she could not hold the fastening. Mrs. Medlock shut the door herself.

"A nice beginning," she said. "Your shoes wet through, and nobody knows what you may have caught."

Mary drew her feet under the rug. Mr. Craven had turned his head when the door opened. Now he turned it away again.

The men dragged the last sack aside. There was a call to the coachman, the horses moved, and the lantern and the overturned wheel disappeared behind them.

Mary did not ask any more questions. She was thinking about the ground which had let her shoe sink into it, and the bush which had pricked her. She had been accustomed to having things done for her, and it was disagreeable to find that even getting out of a carriage could make her uncomfortable in ways she had not expected.

At last the wheels began to crunch upon gravel. The carriage turned, and a great dark house rose before them. Mary could not see how far it stretched. A few windows were lighted, but most of them were black.

When the door opened, the light from within showed broad steps and a stone porch. An elderly man stood waiting in the hall.

"Good evening, sir," he said to Mr. Craven.

Mr. Craven spoke to him in a voice too low for Mary to hear. Then he took off his coat and went away across the hall. His footsteps grew faint, and a door shut somewhere.

"That's Pitcher," Mrs. Medlock said, as the elderly man followed him. "Now come with me."

The hall was so large that Mary's little footsteps sounded quite separate from Mrs. Medlock's. There were pictures upon the walls, and suits of armor which looked as if men were standing inside them. One face in a picture seemed to look down at her with particular severity.

She held her head up and looked back at it.

Mrs. Medlock led her up a broad staircase and through a passage. They turned into another passage, and then into one which was narrower. Mary wondered whether Mrs. Medlock knew all the passages in the house, and what happened if she took the wrong one.

"This is your room," said the housekeeper at last.

There was a fire burning, and candles stood upon a table. The room had heavy furniture and a bed with curtains. Beside the fire was a smaller table laid for supper.

"You'll eat something and go to bed," Mrs. Medlock said. "I'll come back presently. Keep in this room."

Mary was left alone.

She went to the fire and held out her hands. The cold made her cross. She wanted some one to take off her shoes, but there was no one to tell, and after looking at them resentfully she sat down with them still upon her feet.

A knock came at the door.

"Come in," she said.

A manservant entered with a tray. He had gray hair, a broad face, and a mouth which looked as if it found smiling easy. He set a covered dish upon the table and lifted the cover.

"Here's summat hot for thee," he said. "Tha'll be fair hungry after coomin' ower t' moor."

Mary stared at him.

"What?"

"Tha mun get it etten while it's warm. Happen tha'd like a bit o' bread an' all."

"I don't understand what you say," said Mary. "You don't speak as other people do."

The man looked at her, and the corners of his mouth moved.

"Nay, I reckon tha's not heard much Yorkshire where tha's come fro'."

"There!" said Mary. "I don't understand that either."

"Have some supper, miss," he said, more slowly.

She understood this, though she thought it a very common way of speaking to her. She had been waited upon by servants who watched her face to find out what she wanted before she wanted it. This man seemed to think that putting supper upon a table was enough.

"Pour out my milk," she ordered.

He poured it out.

"And draw my chair nearer."

He drew it nearer, but he looked at her again as he did it.

"Tha's got hands o' thy own," he said.

"What did you say?"

"Nowt, miss. Supper's ready."

He went away before she could decide whether she ought to be angry.

The dish held slices of meat and a potato in its skin. Mary did not generally wish to eat, but the potato was hot, and when she broke it open the steam rose into her face. She ate a little of it, and then a little more. She was halfway through the meat when she remembered that she had intended to dislike her supper.

Mrs. Medlock returned carrying a candle and some of Mary's things.

"Well, you've found your appetite," she said. "That's something."

"I don't understand the man who brought this," Mary answered. "He talks very queerly."

"You'll hear plenty of it here. Can you undress yourself?"

"My Ayah undressed me."

"Then you'll have to learn. There's no sense in a child of your age sitting waiting for every button to be undone."

She knelt to take off the wet shoes. Mary watched her without offering to help. She was beginning to think that England was a place where people expected a great deal to be done by children.

Mrs. Medlock had just set the shoes beside the hearth when they both heard a sound.

It came from beyond the door, though not from very near it. There was a long, low scraping noise, followed by two hollow knocks. After a moment there was another knock.

Mary turned her head.

"What is that?" she asked.

Mrs. Medlock rose and went to the table.

"The wind," she said.

Mary listened. She could hear the wind at the window, but that was a rushing sound. The other had seemed to come along the passage.

"Does the wind knock inside the house?" she asked.

"In an old house like this it makes all sorts of noises. There's shutters and chimneys enough for it to get at. Stand up and let me unfasten your frock."

Mary stood up, but she continued to look toward the door.

The sound did not come again while Mrs. Medlock was there. She helped Mary into her nightgown, put her into bed, and drew the coverings up. Then she took away one candle and extinguished the other.

"Go to sleep," she said. "You've had traveling enough for one day."

The door closed, and Mary heard the housekeeper's firm footsteps until they turned into another passage.

For a little while the fire made a red patch upon the ceiling. Mary watched it grow smaller. She could hear rain against the window, and now and then a gust rattled the glass.

She was almost asleep when the other sound came again.

First there was the scraping, and then the two knocks. They were fainter this time, but she knew them. She sat up and listened with her hands clutching the bedclothes.

Perhaps Mrs. Medlock knew what made the sound and did not choose to tell her. Grown people often thought that because one was a child one need not be told things. Mary disliked that very much.

The last red light faded from the ceiling. She lay down again, but kept her eyes open.

She did not know which passage the sound had come from, or how she could reach it. But she had decided that she would find out for herself. In the dark at Misselthwaite Manor, Mary lay awake and listened for it to come again.

“Where have you been?”

“Oh, about.”

The cab went past a lighted café. There were men standing outside it and a waiter was carrying in the chairs. Brett sat forward and looked out of the window.

“Take me to the Rotonde, Jake.”

“Do you want to see somebody?”

“No. I want to sit somewhere.”

I leaned forward and told the driver. He did not hear me at first and I had to tell him again. At the next corner he turned the cab and we went back toward the boulevard. Brett took off her hat and held it on her knees.

“It’s lovely being out of that place,” she said.

“You seemed to like it.”

“I liked it until I saw you.”

“That was unfortunate.”

“Don’t be nasty.”

“I’m not.”

“You are a little.”

The cab stopped behind a bus. We could hear the engine of the bus and see the people sitting upstairs. A woman looked down into the cab. Brett put her hat on again.

“Do you mind going there?” she asked.

“No.”

“We needn’t stay.”

“We haven’t got there yet.”

“I know. I’m making arrangements.”

She put her hand on my arm and left it there until we stopped at the café.

There were people at most of the tables outside. Inside it was brighter and the waiters were busy. We found a table against the wall where we could see the door. Brett took off her hat again and laid it on the seat beside her.

“What will you have?”

“Coffee.”

“Really?”

“Coffee and a brandy.”

I ordered coffee for both of us and the brandy. The waiter brushed some crumbs off the table with the side of his hand. There was a damp circle where a glass had stood.

“You haven’t been in here lately,” Brett said.

“How do you know?”

“I’ve been here.”

“I’ve been working.”

“That sounds very good.”

“It pays the rent.”

“Mine doesn’t.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Whatever it is I do.”

The coffee came in thick white cups. Brett poured some of the brandy into hers and stirred it. She watched the door while she stirred.

“Are you expecting somebody?”

“No. Why?”

“You keep looking.”

“One can look at a door.”

“Certainly.”

She turned toward me.

“Have you ever heard of Charles Fenwick?”

“No.”

“I met him last week. At the Ritz. He’s got a great deal of money.”

“What does he do?”

“I don’t know. He came over to buy something. Pictures, I think.”

“Did he buy them?”

“He bought one. They all told him it was very good.”

“Is it?”

“I never saw it.”

“What’s he like?”

“He’s quite nice. Rather large. He listens to everything you say.”

“That’s useful.”

“It’s dreadful after a while. You have to keep saying things.”

She drank some coffee. At the next table a man was explaining something in French to a woman who did not understand him. Each time he began again he spoke louder. She watched his mouth and shook her head.

“Fenwick has a house near Tours,” Brett said. “He wants me to go down.”

“When?”

“Whenever I like.”

“How long?”

“Oh, a week. Longer if I wanted.”

“He must like you.”

“He says he does.”

The waiter came past and Brett asked him for a glass of water. I watched him go to the bar and fill it. He put it down beside her coffee and took away the empty brandy glass.

“Paris is very pleasant now,” I said.

“Yes. The streets are lovely.”

“You’d miss the streets.”

“I should miss the streets frightfully.”

I was afraid she would go away with him.

She put her hand over mine on the table. Her hand was cool from the glass of water.

“Don’t look like that, Jake.”

“How am I looking?”

“As though you were waiting for me to finish.”

“I’m listening.”

“That’s worse.”

She took her hand away and lit a cigarette. The match went out before she had finished lighting it and I gave her another. She held the cigarette toward me and I held the match. Then she leaned back against the wall.

“I haven’t told him anything,” she said.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“I know I don’t.”

We sat for a while without talking. The people at the next table went out and another couple took their places. The man ordered beer and the woman took off her gloves finger by finger. Brett watched her.

“It’s getting late,” she said.

“Not very.”

“I don’t want to go home.”

“We can stay here.”

“Do you have to work in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“You always have to work.”

“Only when the paper comes out.”

“That’s rather often.”

I ordered another coffee. Brett did not want anything. She had her cigarette in the saucer and watched the smoke rise from it. I thought of Georgette and the envelope behind the bar.

“I’ve got to go back to the dancing-place,” I said.

“What for?”

“My fifty francs.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“They’re my fifty francs.”

“Perhaps she’s still there.”

“Then I’ll see her.”

Brett looked at me and then looked down at the cigarette.

“Will you come back?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll wait here.”

“I won’t be long.”

“Take a taxi.”

I paid for what we had had and left enough for the waiter to bring her another drink. Outside there was a taxi at the curb. The driver was reading a newspaper under the light from the café. He folded it and put it beside him when I gave him the address.

The streets were quiet away from the boulevard. We went past houses with all their windows dark and past a little shop where a woman was washing the floor. At a crossing we waited for a wagon loaded with vegetables. The horse walked slowly and the man on the wagon did not look at us.

I told the driver to wait outside the Bal.

The accordion was still playing. The room seemed hotter when I went in from the street, although there were fewer people in it. The daughter of the house was collecting glasses. Three of the young men sat at a table near the floor. One had his head down on his arms. The tall dark one was smoking and tapping his heel against the leg of the table.

Georgette sat by herself beside the wall. Her hat was on the table and she was rubbing one foot with the other.

The patronne saw me and reached under the bar.

“Your envelope, Monsieur.”

“Did she ask for me?”

“No. She has been dancing.”

She gave me the envelope. It was sealed as I had left it. I put it in my pocket and went over to Georgette.

“Hello,” I said.

She looked up.

“So you’ve come back.”

“Yes.”

“Where’s your friend?”

“At a café.”

“She doesn’t like dancing?”

“She wanted to leave.”

“They all want to leave when they see somebody they know.”

“Have you had a good time?”

“I’ve danced enough.”

“Those fellows dance well.”

“They dance. That one talks all the time.”

She pointed toward the man with his head on the table.

“What does he talk about?”

“I don’t know. He talks English.”

I sat down opposite her. The daughter came over and I ordered two beers.

“I thought you’d gone for good,” Georgette said.

“I left something for you.”

“That’s what the woman told me.”

“Here it is.”

I took out the envelope and gave it to her. She opened it with a hairpin from her bag. She looked at the note and then put it in the bag.

“Thank you.”

“That’s all right.”

“You ought to have told me you were going.”

“You were dancing.”

“You could have told me after.”

“Yes.”

The beer came. Georgette drank half of hers and set the glass down. She had a red mark on her forehead where the hat had pressed.

“Will you dance again?”

“No. I’m going back.”

“To the lady?”

“Yes.”

Georgette nodded. She looked across at the young men and then at the proprietor playing the accordion. He was playing more slowly now. The bells on his ankle sounded separately and you could hear the floor creak under his stool.

“Do you want a taxi?” I asked.

“No. I’ll stay a little.”

“Good night, then.”

She held out her hand.

“Good night, Jacob.”

I shook hands with her and went out. The driver had put on his lights. He was standing beside the cab smoking a cigarette. When I came up he threw it into the gutter and opened the door.

“Back to the Rotonde,” I said.

Brett was sitting at the same table. There was a glass beside her and she had put her hat on. She smiled when she saw me.

“Did you recover your fortune?”

“She was there.”

“I told you.”

“I gave it to her.”

“That was decent.”

“It was hers.”

“Did she mind?”

“Not very much.”

“Women are wonderful.”

The waiter brought me a glass without asking. I had a drink and felt better for a moment. Brett pushed her glass away.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” she said.

“I said I would.”

“Yes. I know.”

“Was somebody here?”

“A man asked if I was waiting for somebody.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I was.”

I looked at the clock over the bar. It was after three. There was only one man left at the next table and he was asleep with his chin on his chest. His beer had a skin of foam around the inside of the glass.

“Have you had enough of this place?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Shall I get a taxi?”

“Let’s walk a little.”

“You’ve changed.”

“I’ve been sitting a long time.”

We went out. The air was cool now and Brett buttoned her jacket. Along the boulevard the café terraces were empty. Chairs stood upside down on the tables and there was water on the pavement. We walked beside the shuttered shops. In one window there were shoes arranged on little stands, and Brett stopped to look at them.

“They’re lovely,” she said.

“Buy some.”

“The shop’s shut.”

“You could come back.”

“I never come back to shops.”

We went on. There was a man asleep in a doorway with a folded sack under his head. Brett took my arm as we passed him.

“I’m tired,” she said.

“We can get a cab.”

“Not yet.”

We turned toward the Luxembourg. The gates were shut and the trees stood dark behind the railings. Walking beside them you could smell the damp earth. A light burned in a lodge and farther on there was a man sweeping the pavement. He stopped to let us pass and then began again.

“Do you ever go into the gardens?” Brett asked.

“Sometimes.”

“What do you do?”

“Sit. Read the papers.”

“Do people talk to you?”

“No.”

“That sounds very nice.”

“It is.”

“I should like to do that.”

“You can.”

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose I can.”

We walked slowly. There was nothing open along that part of the street. At the corner a taxi passed us and I raised my hand, but it had somebody in it.

“Now you want one,” I said.

“In a minute.”

“You said you were tired.”

“I am. I don’t want to sit down.”

We stopped at a café where a man was taking the shutters off the door. He said he was not open, but he would give us coffee if we waited. We waited at a table outside while he went in and lit the gas. Brett leaned her elbows on the table and held her face in her hands.

“You needn’t wait with me,” she said.

“I want some coffee.”

“You’ve had a lot of coffee.”

“This may be better.”

It was good coffee. The man brought hot milk in a little jug and a basket with two rolls in it. Brett ate one of the rolls. She tore it into pieces and ate slowly. A delivery cart stopped outside and the driver carried sacks through the café door. While he was inside the horse rubbed its head against the shaft.

“I’m not going to Tours to-day,” Brett said.

“You haven’t told him you would.”

“No.”

“Then there’s no difficulty.”

“There’s always something.”

She finished the coffee. The man was sweeping inside the café now and we could hear his broom against the tiles.

We walked down toward the river. The sky was lighter above the roofs and the street lamps looked yellow. At the place Saint-Michel there were two taxis. The drivers were talking beside one of them.

“Here you are,” I said.

Brett stopped and looked across the river.

“It’s morning.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve kept you up all night.”

“I wasn’t asleep when you found me.”

“No,” she said. “You weren’t.”

I called to one of the drivers. He came over and Brett gave him an address. I opened the door and she got in. She sat back and looked at me through the open window.

“You’ll go home now?”

“Yes.”

“Good night, Jake.”

“Good night.”

She reached out and held my hand. Then she let it go and I stood back. The driver climbed into his seat and started the cab. I watched it turn and go up the street.

I crossed to the quay. It was dawn and the river was grey below the wall. On the other bank a man was unfastening the doors of a book-stall. I walked home along the river, and the air was cold where my shirt had dried.

I shut the book and slipped it back into its place. There was something peculiarly dreadful about the quiet of the library. The chairs stood just as we had left them the evening before, and an open newspaper lay upon the floor beside John's usual seat. I found myself looking at it with a foolish surprise that such ordinary things should remain unchanged.

Then I caught up my hat and went out.

The village was scarcely awake. A woman was washing the doorstep of the post office, and, farther down the street, a boy was driving two cows towards a field. I hurried past them to the little house where Poirot lodged.

Before I could knock, the door opened.

"Ah, Hastings! I expected you."

He wore a magnificent dressing-gown, and his moustaches, in spite of the early hour, were arranged with their customary precision.

"You have heard?"

"Yes. Come in, my friend."

"Who told you?"

"Baily, your chauffeur. He brought Dr. Wilkins home, and stopped when he saw me at the window. He knew that I was acquainted with Madame Inglethorp."

His manner had none of the excitement which I had expected. He drew forward a chair, but I was too impatient to sit down.

"John has agreed that you shall come. We must lose no time."

"Certainly. But first you will tell me what you know."

I gave him my account as briefly as I could. He listened without interruption, his eyes half closed, his fingertips pressed together. Once or twice, when I thought I had made a particularly significant point, he seemed hardly to attend. Yet he stopped me over the exact position of a door, and obliged me to describe it twice.

"And the rooms are now locked?"

"Yes. John has the keys."

"Good. You will return, Hastings, and ask him to have them ready for me. No one must arrange the room, or sweep, or put anything straight."

"Surely you are coming now?"

He glanced down at his dressing-gown.

"You would have me present myself like this? Besides, there are certain little things I must bring. Go, my friend. I shall follow you."

I was disappointed. It seemed to me that his toilette might reasonably have been sacrificed to the urgency of the occasion. Nevertheless, I went.

As I entered the hall at Styles, I heard the front door open behind me. Alfred Inglethorp stood upon the threshold.

For a moment we regarded each other without speaking. His clothes appeared somewhat creased, and there was dust upon his boots. He held his hat in one hand.

"Mr. Hastings! What has happened? I met Baily at the lodge, but I could scarcely understand him."

John came out of the dining-room.

"Your wife is dead."

Inglethorp dropped his hat. He caught at the back of a chair, and stood there with his mouth open. Whatever I might think of the man, his consternation was sufficiently evident.

"Emily? Dead? But I left her perfectly well!"

John's face hardened.

"She was taken ill during the night."

"Why was I not sent for?"

"We did not know where you were."

"I was at Denby's. You know Denby, on the other side of the village."

He looked from John to me, as though expecting us to confirm the adequacy of this explanation.

"We had some business to discuss about a small holding. After leaving Dr. Bauerstein I went there, and stayed later than I intended. It must have been nearly twelve when I got back to the gates. Then I remembered that I had left the latch-key upon the hall table."

I looked at him sharply.

"I did not like to ring and disturb everybody," he continued. "Denby had offered to put me up, so I went back. I slept upon his sofa."

"You could have rung," said John.

"Yes, yes. If I had only known!"

He passed his hand across his forehead. His distress, whether assumed or real, had made him look suddenly older.

"Can I see her?"

"The doctors have locked the rooms. We are waiting for someone."

"Waiting? For whom?"

"A friend of Hastings'."

John spoke with such evident reluctance that I thought it better to intervene.

"A Belgian gentleman who has had considerable experience in these matters. The doctors have asked for a post-mortem."

Inglethorp stared at me.

"A post-mortem?"

John turned away.

"You had better go into the drawing-room. Dorcas will bring you something."

For a moment Inglethorp seemed about to protest. Then he stooped, recovered his hat, and went slowly across the hall.

I had hardly finished telling John that Poirot wished for the keys when the little Belgian arrived. He was now dressed with his usual care, and carried a small leather case.

John greeted him gravely.

"I am glad you have come, Monsieur Poirot. Hastings has told you?"

"He has told me what he saw. With your permission, I should like to see the room."

John gave him the keys.

"The inner door is broken, of course. Bauerstein locked the two doors into the passage."

"Precisely. And nothing has been touched?"

"Nothing, so far as I know."

Poirot inclined his head.

"Then we will go up."

He made no request to see Alfred Inglethorp, and I was sufficiently surprised to mention, as we ascended the stairs, that the missing man had returned.

"Ah!"

"He says that he spent the night with a man called Denby."

"Indeed?"

That was all. His indifference annoyed me, but we had reached the door, and I said no more.

John unlocked it for us and withdrew. Poirot waited until his footsteps had died away before entering.

The curtains had been drawn back. The sunlight fell upon the overturned table and the disorder beside the bed. A sheet covered the still figure upon the pillows. I found that I could not look in that direction.

Poirot stood just inside the doorway. He did not advance at once, but examined the room with a slow movement of his head.

"Show me where each of you stood, Hastings."

I did so. He questioned me closely about the moment at which the gas had been lighted, and whether anyone had crossed to the windows. I could not see what either circumstance had to do with the case.

"It was all confusion," I said at last. "One could hardly observe everything."

"No. That is why we must be very careful with what we did observe."

He crossed to the broken connecting door. One hinge still held, and the splintered wood had fallen into Mr. Inglethorp's room. Poirot examined the lock, then stepped through and looked about him.

When he returned, he went straight to the door communicating with Cynthia's room.

"This was tried also?"

"Yes. John went round to the other side."

"And reported that it was bolted?"

"Yes."

Poirot bent down. There was a stout bolt upon our side of the door, and he studied it for some time. Then he took a little pair of forceps from his case.

"What is it?" I asked.

He did not answer. With great care he drew something from the narrow angle between the socket of the bolt and the woodwork.

He held it towards the light.

It was a broken black hairpin, scarcely an inch long. One end had been bent into a small hook, and a few turns of fine white thread adhered to it.

"A hairpin!" I exclaimed.

"Yes."

"Do you think it is important?"

"Everything may be important."

He laid it upon a clean sheet of paper and held it out for me to inspect.

"But what do you make of it?"

"At present, my friend, I shall say nothing."

"Surely you have some idea?"

"Several. That is the trouble. If I give you one, you will remember it and forget the others."

He folded the paper about the hairpin, placed it in an envelope, and put the envelope into his pocket.

I confess that this was disappointing. I had looked forward to witnessing an immediate and brilliant deduction. Instead, Poirot continued his examination with an attention to trifles which seemed to me positively vexatious.

He looked at the hearth, at the clock, and at the despatch-case upon the writing-table. He did not attempt to open the latter. He knelt beside the overturned table, and remained there so long that I grew impatient.

At length he rose.

"The table fell during the first attack?"

"I suppose so. It was already down when we came in."

"Ah! You suppose so."

"What else could have overturned it?"

"That is a question. We must not answer it merely because we have asked it."

He stood for a little while beside the bed. His face had become very grave. Then he turned abruptly towards the door.

"We will leave the room as it is."

"Have you finished?"

"For the moment."

Downstairs, breakfast had been laid in the dining-room, although nobody appeared disposed to eat. Lawrence stood at the window with his back to us. Mary Cavendish was pouring out tea, and Cynthia sat beside her, looking pale and exhausted.

Poirot bowed to the ladies. Cynthia made a little effort to smile.

"I am afraid I am dreadfully stupid this morning," she said. "Everything seems to have happened in a dream."

Poirot regarded her attentively.

"Mademoiselle, did you wake at any time last night before Mrs. Cavendish came to you?"

"No. I never woke once. I did not even hear them breaking the door."

"Merci."

He asked her nothing more. Mary gave the girl a cup of tea, which she took in both hands as though glad of its warmth.

John came in presently. He had been making the necessary arrangements, and looked worn and anxious.

"I suppose there is nothing we can do until the doctors have finished?" he asked.

"We can preserve what is here," said Poirot. "That is already something."

Lawrence turned from the window.

"I hope you are not taking Hastings' conclusions for granted."

Poirot looked at him mildly.

"I take no conclusions for granted, monsieur."

There was a short silence. I felt that Lawrence's remark had been aimed chiefly at me, and was about to defend myself when Dorcas appeared at the door.

Poirot rose.

"If you will permit, I should like a few words with this good woman."

We followed her into the little morning-room. She had recovered some of her composure, but her eyes were red, and she kept smoothing her apron with both hands.

Poirot drew a chair forward for her.

"There are certain matters, Dorcas, upon which your memory will assist us. First, was the door into Miss Cynthia's room ever used?"

"Never, sir. Not these many years. The mistress always kept the bolt across."

"Did you examine it this morning?"

"No, sir. There was enough to do without that."

Poirot nodded. He asked about the room, and about those who had entered it after the alarm. Dorcas answered readily. Then, as he seemed about to dismiss her, she looked towards me.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Hastings, but there was something I wanted to say."

"Yes, Dorcas?"

"About what Mr. Inglethorp said in the hall. I was coming from the back passage, and I heard him say he'd left the latch-key on the table."

I exchanged a glance with Poirot.

"He did say that."

"Well, sir, he didn't. I handed it to him myself."

"You are sure?"

"As sure as I sit here. It was lying beside the letters, and he was going out with Dr. Bauerstein. I said, 'Your key, sir,' and he took it and put it into his waistcoat pocket. I saw him do it."

"Perhaps he laid it down again," suggested Poirot.

"No, sir. They went out immediately. I shut the door behind them."

Poirot thanked her and rose. Dorcas appeared relieved to have said what was on her mind.

When she had gone, I turned to him eagerly.

"There! I knew he had taken it. He announced that he was doing so."

"Then Dorcas has confirmed your recollection."

"It is a direct contradiction."

"Of what was said? Yes."

His distinction irritated me.

"You surely cannot regard it as unimportant?"

"Did I say that it was unimportant?"

"No, but you seem remarkably cool about it."

"My friend, if I become hot about every fact, I shall have no energy left to consider them."

He went to the window and stood looking out upon the lawn. I could not tell whether he was thinking of Inglethorp's explanation or of something quite different.

The morning passed with a slowness which I found almost intolerable. There were messages to be sent, and people arriving at the back entrance whom John went out to see. Once I encountered Alfred Inglethorp crossing the hall. He asked whether Dr. Wilkins had returned, and, upon hearing that he had not, went back into the drawing-room.

Poirot remained downstairs. He spoke little, but whenever anyone mentioned a time he asked how it had been ascertained. I began to understand that he distrusted a household's recollections of a night in which nobody had thought to consult a watch until the worst was over.

At half-past ten Dr. Wilkins came back. He had arranged for Mrs. Inglethorp to be moved to an unused bedroom, where the examination could take place that evening. Poirot spoke to him privately, and afterwards went upstairs with John while the removal was carried out.

When he returned for me, his expression was unusually thoughtful.

"Come, Hastings. We will look once more."

It was a quarter past eleven by my watch when we entered the bedroom.

The bed was empty now, and the room seemed larger and more desolate. Poirot closed the door and turned the key. The broken connecting door still hung crookedly in its frame, but the passage door of the room beyond remained locked.

We were alone.

Poirot took the envelope from his pocket and laid it upon the little writing-table. He unfolded the paper. The broken hairpin lay between us, its black surface very plain against the white.

For some time he said nothing.

I looked again at the bolt upon Cynthia's door. It was still across, exactly as I had seen it earlier.

"A thing like that might have been there for weeks," I said.

"Quite possibly."

"Then I do not see how it can help us."

Poirot touched one of the turns of thread with the point of his forceps.

"Nor do I, as yet, see all that it may tell us."

"But you have formed an opinion."

He looked up at me. There was a curious satisfaction in his face which I had not seen before.

I could make nothing of his answer.

"Someone has been at great pains, Hastings, to lock a door which was already locked."

I borrowed the check book from Miss Lewis and went around to the First National Bank.

The bank occupied the lower floor of a stone building at Broadway and Union Street. There was plenty of brass on the doors and not much polish on it. Inside, a man was arguing with a teller about an overdraft. The teller kept saying the same thing. He had the advantage of a grille between them.

I asked for somebody who could tell me about Donald Willsson's account. A clerk took me to an assistant cashier named Vail. He was a narrow man with sandy hair and a long upper lip. He looked at my credentials, at the check book, and at me, in that order.

"What is it you wish to know?"

"Whether the last check in there has been paid."

He opened the book.

"Five thousand dollars?"

"That's it."

"Have you the check?"

"If I had it I wouldn't have to ask where it went."

He didn't like that much. He closed the book halfway and said:

"We can't give out information about depositors' accounts to anybody who asks."

"Willsson hired us before he died. I'm trying to find out what happened to him between writing that check and getting killed. You can tell me now or wait until the police ask you."

"Are you working with the police?"

"I haven't got that far yet."

He considered me some more, then got up and carried the book behind a partition. He was gone long enough for the man at the teller's window to give up his argument.

Vail came back with a sheet of paper.

"That check has never been presented for payment," he said. "Nor has it been certified."

"You're sure of both?"

"Quite sure. We have checked the account and the certification record."

"Enough money there to meet it?"

"Yes."

"Did Willsson come in yesterday afternoon?"

"He did."

"About a quarter of three?"

"That would be about right."

"What did he want?"

Vail put the paper face down on his desk.

"He asked me a question about a check payable to cash."

"What question?"

"Whether the person presenting it would have to be identified."

"What did you tell him?"

"That we would want to know who received the money."

"Did he show you a check?"

"No."

"Did he say anything about five thousand dollars?"

"No."

"Did he get any money?"

"He didn't transact any business with me. I have ascertained that he made no withdrawal at any of the windows."

"Was he alone?"

"Yes."

"Did he seem worried?"

Vail moved his upper lip over his teeth.

"He seemed in a hurry. Mr. Willsson was usually in a hurry."

I asked a few more questions and got nothing for them. Vail hadn't seen which way Willsson went when he left. He hadn't noticed whether he carried anything. He didn't know whom he intended paying.

I took the check book back to the Herald. Miss Lewis put it in the drawer we had opened.

"Did you find out anything?" she asked.

"The bank hasn't seen the check."

Her eyes widened.

"Then he still had it when he was killed?"

"He might have. He might have given it away. He might have torn it up."

She looked disappointed in me. I left her looking that way.

It was nearly two when I got to the Great Western. The desk clerk leaned across the counter and said:

"Mrs. Donald Willsson is waiting for you in the writing room."

I hadn't invited her or sent her any message. I went into the writing room.

She stood up beside a small table. She wore a black dress, a black hat, and black shoes. Her face was white, but she had done something to her mouth to keep it red.

"I wish to talk to you privately," she said.

I took her upstairs to my room. She sat in the chair beside the window without taking off her gloves. I sat on the edge of the bed.

"You have been to my husband's father," she said.

"Yes."

"His secretary told me. What did you tell him?"

"That I hadn't had a chance to talk to his son."

"And about me?"

"That you went out last night and came back with blood on your slipper."

She looked down at her black shoes.

"You had no right to tell him that."

"Was it blood?"

She raised her eyes to mine.

"Yes."

"Your husband's?"

"Yes."

"How did you get it?"

She pulled at the fingers of one glove, but didn't take it off.

"I went to him. I found him in the street."

"Why did you go there?"

"Someone telephoned me."

"I was there when you got the call. Who was it?"

"A woman. I do not know who."

"What did she say?"

The widow stopped pulling at her glove.

"She said that if I wished to know what my husband was doing I should go to Hurricane Street. She gave me the block. She said I should wait there, that he would come out before eleven."

"Come out of what?"

"She did not say."

"Didn't you ask?"

"She hung up."

"You believed her?"

"I went."

"That's what I mean."

"I did not know whether to believe her. But I went."

"Did you recognize the voice?"

"No. It was a low voice. I could not tell you anything about it."

"Where did you leave your car?"

"In the next block. I did not wish him to see it."

"And then?"

"I walked back and waited on the other side of the street. I did not know which house to watch."

"How long did you wait?"

"I cannot say. Perhaps ten minutes."

"See anybody?"

"A few people passed."

"Your husband?"

"No. Not until afterward."

Her mouth twitched at one corner. She pressed her lips together and waited until they were quiet.

"I heard the shots. I was looking toward the corner then. When I turned I saw a man lying on the pavement. Another man was going toward him. I crossed the street."

"Who was the other man?"

"I do not know."

"What did he look like?"

"He had a dark coat and a hat. I did not look at him closely."

"Young? Old? Big? Little?"

"Not old. I think he was tall. I don't know."

"What did he do?"

"He bent down. I bent down beside him. Donald was dead."

"Did you touch your husband?"

"I touched his face."

"Anything else?"

She stared at me.

"What else should I touch?"

"His pockets, for instance."

"No."

"Did the man touch his pockets?"

"I did not see him do it."

"What did the man say?"

"He told me to go away. He said I could do nothing, and that the police would be there."

"Did he know who you were?"

"I don't know."

"Did you tell him?"

"No."

"Then you went home?"

"Yes."

"Leaving your husband there?"

She sat stiffly upright.

"He was dead. I could do nothing for him."

"You could have stayed to tell the police what you knew."

"I knew nothing."

"You knew somebody had sent you to that street twenty minutes before he was killed."

"I did not wish to have the police asking me questions about my husband and another woman."

"Was there another woman?"

"That is what the telephone call meant."

"That's what you thought it meant. Did she say there was a woman?"

The widow lowered her head.

"No."

I let her sit with that for a while. Down in the street a truck was having trouble getting started. Every time it stopped coughing somebody swore at it.

"What did you tell Thaler this morning?" I asked.

She looked up.

"How do you know he was there?"

"I saw him go in."

"I asked him to come."

"What for?"

"I wanted to know who had telephoned me."

"Why ask him?"

"He knows the people here. My husband had talked to him. I thought he might know."

"Did he?"

"He said he did not."

"What else did he say?"

"That I should be careful whom I talked to."

"Did he include me?"

"He did not know about you then."

"Who else have you told this story to?"

"Nobody."

"Not even Thaler?"

"I told him about the telephone call."

"And about finding your husband?"

"No."

"Did your husband have five thousand dollars with him last night?"

She looked at me without answering.

"A check," I said. "He wrote one yesterday afternoon."

"I know nothing about it."

"He didn't tell you he meant to pay somebody that much money?"

"No."

"Did he bring home an envelope yesterday?"

"I did not see him yesterday afternoon. He telephoned that he would dine downtown."

"Did he say with whom?"

"No."

A knock on the door interrupted us. I opened it to a bellboy with an envelope.

"There's no answer unless you want to give one," he said.

"Who brought it?"

"A chauffeur. He said it was from Mr. Thaler."

I shut the door, opened the envelope, and read:

"I want to talk to you about Donald Willsson. I understand you have been asking questions. Don't start anything until you hear what I've got to say. I'll send word where and when. Max Thaler."

The widow watched my face.

"Is it something about Donald?"

"It's from your friend."

I handed her the note. She read it twice and gave it back.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"Keep on asking questions."

"Will you show that to my husband's father?"

"I don't know."

"You mustn't tell him what I have told you today."

"Why not?"

"He hates me. He will make everything I say mean something bad."

"He doesn't need much help at that."

She stood up.

"You think I killed Donald."

"I think you know more than you told me last night. Now you've told me some of it."

"I have told you all."

"Maybe."

She gave me a hard little look, then turned toward the door. Her hand was on the knob when she stopped.

"That check," she said. "Do you know who it was for?"

"No."

"Could it have been for the newspapers?"

"It could."

She nodded, as if I had agreed with something she knew, and went out.

I waited a couple of minutes and went downstairs. The chauffeur had gone. I told the bellboy that if he came back he could tell Thaler I was still at the Great Western.

Then I went to Hurricane Street.

The eleven-hundred block was a row of small houses with narrow front yards and wooden fences. Across from the place where Willsson had fallen, the alley ran between a vacant store and a house whose shades were down. I walked through the alley to the next street. It had two side gates and a back door opening on it. There was room for a man to stand at its mouth without showing himself to anybody coming along the opposite sidewalk.

That didn't tell me who had stood there.

A woman in a loose blue dress opened the door of the house that had caught the two bullets. She had told her story to the police and didn't like having to tell it again.

She had been in bed when she heard the shots. By the time she reached the window there were two people bending over the dead man. She hadn't seen their faces. She hadn't seen where they went.

"Did you hear a car?" I asked.

"There are cars going along here all the time."

"Just then?"

"I heard one after I got to the window. I couldn't say where it was."

"Did the man and woman seem to be talking?"

"I couldn't hear them."

"Did they go away together?"

"I told you I didn't see them go."

She began shutting the door. I let her finish.

I tried the other houses. One man had heard the shooting and stayed inside. Another had come out after the body was alone. Two houses gave me nobody at all. At the vacant store I found a dusty window, an empty room, and a locked door.

I got back to the hotel after dinner. The clerk had no message for me. I asked for a telegraph blank and took it upstairs.

There wasn't much I could report except what I hadn't learned. The Old Man would want that anyway. I addressed the wire to him at the Continental Detective Agency's San Francisco office and wrote:

"DONALD WILLSSON KILLED BEFORE INTERVIEW. PURPOSE OF EMPLOYMENT STILL UNKNOWN. PERSONAL CHECK FOR FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS DRAWN YESTERDAY AFTERNOON HAS NEVER BEEN PRESENTED OR CERTIFIED AT FIRST NATIONAL BANK. PAYEE UNKNOWN. WIDOW ADMITS FINDING BODY BEFORE POLICE ARRIVED. SAYS UNKNOWN WOMAN DIRECTED HER TO HURRICANE STREET BY TELEPHONE BEFORE SHOOTING. NO CORROBORATION YET. MAX THALER SENT MESSAGE REQUESTING TALK. HAVE NOT SEEN HIM. INVESTIGATION CONTINUING. WILL REPORT TOMORROW."

I read it over, made a copy, and rang for a boy. I gave him the wire and enough money to send it, and told him to bring back the receipt.

While he was gone I called the police station. The man who answered said Noonan wasn't there. I asked whether a five-thousand-dollar check had been found among Donald Willsson's effects.

"I don't know anything about it," he said.

"Can you find somebody who does?"

"Call the chief in the morning."

I hung up.

The boy came back at half-past eight with my change and the telegraph receipt. I put the receipt beside my copy and locked the door after him.

It was dark outside. I took off my coat and sat beside the window. The widow could have told the truth about everything she had done and still have left out most of what she knew. Thaler wanted me to wait for him. I hadn't agreed to wait.

I had copied the amount on the check stub, but there had been no name to copy. I put the figures on a fresh sheet of paper and tried to find a reason for Willsson to write them before going to Hurricane Street.

At ten o'clock I was still alone in the room, with the wire sent and no idea who had the check.

Mr. Franklin was the first of us to get up. He brushed the sand off his beautiful clothes, and then gave me his hand. I rose with his help, having reached that time of life when a man likes to find somebody younger than himself at the other end of his arm.

"Now, Betteredge," says he, "which way takes us home?"

I pointed to the plantation, and we set off together.

He had left his luggage at the house, and had learnt from one of the men where to look for me. My lady and Miss Rachel had not returned. Having nobody to welcome him indoors, he had come out to seek his welcome from the old servant. You will understand that I thought the better of him for that.

"And what brings you here four hours before your time, sir?" I asked.

"A letter which I received in London last night."

He put his hand into his breast-pocket, and took out the letter.

"I had intended to travel by the later train," he said. "Mr. Bruff persuaded me to take the earlier one. Read what he says."

I stopped where a little opening among the firs let the light fall on the paper. Here is the letter, copied from the original, which Mr. Franklin afterwards placed at my disposal.

"London, Wednesday Evening, "May 24th, 1848.

"My dear Mr. Blake,

"Since you left my office, I have received notice that a person professing to represent a creditor of your uncle, Mr. John Herncastle, intends to wait upon you at your hotel to-morrow. I have reason to doubt his account of himself. Until I have made the necessary inquiries, I advise you to decline any interview with him, and to refer him, if he writes, to me.

"You can avoid an unpleasant encounter by taking the morning train to Yorkshire, instead of the train by which you proposed to travel. Your aunt will doubtless excuse your arriving some hours before she expects you. Leave no directions at the hotel by which a stranger can follow you. I will communicate with you at Lady Verinder's house as soon as I have anything definite to report.

"You need feel no alarm. My advice is a precaution, and I recommend you to act upon it.

"Very truly yours, "MATTHEW BRUFF."

I folded the letter, and gave it back.

"A creditor of Mr. Herncastle's, sir?"

"A person who calls himself a creditor's agent," says Mr. Franklin. "There is a difference."

There generally is a difference when a lawyer has had the settling of the words. I have noticed that the smallest words give the greatest trouble in legal affairs. You may understand the whole of a letter very comfortably, until the lawyer points out that you have understood one syllable too much. After that, you begin again, and understand nothing.

"Was there anybody following you?" I asked.

"Nobody that I saw. I left before the visitor could arrive. Bruff knows more about the matter than he has chosen to put on paper."

"And you know no more than this?"

"I know enough to take his advice."

He said it pleasantly, but he put the letter away as he said it. There was an end of my inquiries on that subject.

We walked on through the firs. Mr. Franklin asked after the household, and I answered him according to my knowledge. He remembered people whom I had forgotten he had ever seen; and he forgot things which I could have sworn would have remained in his memory to his dying day. Among the latter was the occasion of his borrowing the seven-and-sixpence which he had mentioned on the sands.

"I remember owing it," says he. "I don't remember what I wanted it for."

"You wanted it to buy a white mouse, sir."

"Did I?"

"With red eyes."

He laughed till the plantation rang again. I laughed too. There are worse ways of beginning a gentleman's visit than by bringing his boyhood back to him.

The laughter reminded me, by some turn in my thoughts which I cannot account for, of Penelope's serious face that afternoon. I had promised to put her question to Mr. Franklin, and here was my opportunity. Before we reached the end of the walk, I told him what she had heard the boy say, and asked whether he could make anything of it.

He stopped as short as if I had laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Are you certain of the words, Betteredge?"

"As certain as my daughter could make me, sir."

He made me repeat the words concerning the English gentleman, and the thing which the gentleman had about him. His face lost its pleasant look.

"This is no laughing matter," he said.

I had been preparing to laugh at it myself. Hearing him speak in that way, I kept my amusement where it belonged, inside me.

"What do you suppose the boy meant?" I asked.

"I believe he meant the Moonstone."

"And what may that be, sir?"

"A matter on which I must speak to my aunt."

He looked towards the house, and quickened his pace. I followed, with my curiosity a good deal livelier than it had been when we started.

At the door he turned to me again.

"I want you to do something for me, Betteredge. Is the plate-room as secure as it used to be?"

"More secure, sir. We have had a new lock since your time."

"And who keeps the key?"

"I keep it."

"Then I couldn't have come to a better person."

He took a small packet from an inner pocket of his coat. It was wrapped in paper, and sealed. There was no direction on the outside.

"Will you lock this up for me until to-morrow morning?"

I held out my hand, and he put the packet into it.

"In the plate-room?" I asked.

"In the plate-room. I shall be obliged to you if you will put it there yourself."

"Certainly, sir."

I waited a moment, expecting him to tell me what I had undertaken to keep. He said nothing more.

Now, a man who has had the care of valuable property for the greater part of his life gets into the habit of asking questions about it. The habit is useful when a spoon is missing, and less useful when a gentleman has his own reasons for holding his tongue. I looked at the seals, and then I looked at Mr. Franklin. He understood me.

"You shall have your explanation in good time," he said. "For the present, will you trust me?"

That settled it. I had known him when the greatest secret in his possession was a mouse in his waistcoat-pocket. If he had grown old enough to possess another sort of secret, I was not going to make him purchase my services by telling it.

I took him as far as the library, where the newspapers were laid out for my lady, and left him there. Then I went straight to the plate-room.

The windows of that room were barred; the door was stout; and the new lock had cost a sum which I had thought extravagant until I came to use it. I put the packet on an empty shelf inside the cupboard, locked the cupboard, locked the door, and put the keys in my pocket. There it was, safe for the night. What was inside the paper I knew no more, after locking it up, than I had known before Mr. Franklin put it into my hand.

On my way back, I met Penelope.

"Have you brought Rosanna in?" she asked.

"I left her coming towards the house."

"She has not come back to the house at all. She has gone on to Cobb's Hole."

"How do you know?"

"I met her on the village road. I had been down to the lodge with a message. She told me she was going to see her friend."

"Did you tell her she was wanted at dinner?"

"Yes."

"And what did she say to that?"

"She said she wasn't hungry."

There was the same answer over again! I had heard it on the sands, and I heard it now in the passage. In my experience, a young woman who says she is not hungry is either ill, or has something on her mind. Rosanna had both disadvantages to contend with. I began to wish I had brought her home when I had her beside me.

"Did she look poorly?" I asked.

"She looked different."

"Different in what way?"

Penelope considered.

"I can't tell you."

Here was a young woman who could report every fold in a new dress, unable to report an alteration in another young woman's face. I said so. My daughter received the remark with that patient expression which always makes me feel that I have been talking foolishly.

"She asked whether Mr. Franklin was going to stay," Penelope added.

"And you told her?"

"That he was staying till after Miss Rachel's birthday."

I remembered Rosanna's behaviour on the beach, and wondered whether she had taken our young gentleman for somebody whom she had known in former days. It seemed the likeliest explanation. I mention it to show you how easily a man may satisfy himself with an explanation, when nobody has asked him to prove it.

"We must give her a little time," I said. "Her work was well forward this morning. If she comes back in a reasonable hour, I shall say no more about it."

Penelope went away, and I went to get the dinner which had been waiting for me. Between Mr. Franklin's letter, Mr. Franklin's packet, and Rosanna's proceedings, I had contrived to forget my own stomach. The mutton reminded me of it. I took the reminder kindly, and made a good meal.

My lady returned towards five o'clock.

I was in the hall when Mr. Franklin came out of the library to receive her. She gave him both her hands, and looked at him for a moment before she spoke. There are people who count the years in their relations' faces. My lady looked as if she were trying to find the child she remembered in the man who stood before her.

"You have grown very like your mother, Franklin," she said.

He kissed her hand. I thought his foreign manners became him better on that occasion than they had become him when he squeezed my neck on the sands.

My lady took him into her sitting-room. I was turning away, when she called me back to move a chair which stood inconveniently near the window. Before I had finished, she asked what had brought him so early.

He told her of Mr. Bruff's letter, and offered to show it.

At the first mention of her brother's name, my lady's face altered. She did not take the letter.

"Betteredge, remain a moment," she said.

I remained by the door.

"Franklin, I am glad to see you. I wish you to feel that this is your home while you are with us. But there is one subject which I forbid to be discussed under my roof. That subject is John Herncastle."

Mr. Franklin still held the letter in his hand.

"I had hoped, aunt, that you would allow me to explain something."

"If it concerns my brother, I will hear no explanation. Whatever business you may have with Mr. Bruff must remain between Mr. Bruff and yourself."

She spoke quietly. In all my years of service, I had never known quiet speaking to mean that my lady might be persuaded.

Mr. Franklin folded his letter.

"I will respect your wishes," he said.

"I ask for your promise."

"You have my promise. I will not discuss John Herncastle under your roof."

My lady held out her hand to him again.

"Then we understand each other."

She turned to me.

"You have heard what I have said, Betteredge."

"Yes, my lady."

"You will remember it."

I bowed, and left them.

If you think I went out of the room with a clear understanding of the business, you give my understanding more credit than it deserves. I knew that Mr. Franklin had something to explain, and that my lady would not hear it. I knew also that I had something locked up, and that I had not been told what it was. The rest was as far beyond me as the end of the world.

The evening brought plenty of work to keep my thoughts employed. Mr. Franklin's luggage had to be taken upstairs; a room which had stood unused wanted another airing; and one of the women discovered, at the last possible moment, that a curtain-ring was missing. My lady's dinner went its way above stairs, and the servants' supper followed below. By the time I had leisure to ask again after Rosanna, it was past eight o'clock.

She had not returned.

I sent a boy to Cobb's Hole, with instructions to inquire at her friend's cottage, and to say that she was expected home. Having done that, I made my usual round of the lower part of the house.

At the plate-room door I stopped, tried the lock, and felt for the keys in my pocket. The packet was where I had put it. I had no occasion to go in.

Mr. Franklin met me near the stairs.

"All safe, Betteredge?"

"All safe, sir."

"Thank you."

He looked as if he would have said something more. Then he remembered, or appeared to remember, my lady's prohibition, and went upstairs without saying it.

The boy came back a little after nine. He had found Rosanna at the cottage. She had sent word that she would return soon.

"Was she ill?" I asked.

"No, Mr. Betteredge."

"Was her friend ill?"

"No, Mr. Betteredge."

"Then what was she doing?"

The boy had seen her at the table, with some sewing before her. That was all he could tell me.

I dismissed him, and gave Penelope the news. My daughter looked relieved, though she had denied being anxious when I asked her the question. I was relieved myself, and had made no such denial.

As the evening air grew chilly, I had my beehive chair brought in from the court to my own sitting-room. My lamp was lighted, my pipe was ready, and Robinson Crusoe lay on the table. Nothing was wanting to my comfort but the knowledge that our second housemaid was within doors.

I sat down, and opened my book.

Unfortunately, I opened it at a place where Crusoe had more cause for uneasiness than I had myself. I read a little, looked at the clock, and listened. Then I began the passage again. This time I got farther, until a footstep in the passage brought my eyes off the page.

It was Penelope.

"Has she come?" I asked.

"Not yet."

My daughter looked at the book, and then at me.

"I shall leave the side-door on the latch till ten," she said.

"Very good, my dear."

When she had gone, I put my hand into my pocket once more. The plate-room keys were there. Whatever else might be giving trouble in the house, I had done the thing Mr. Franklin had asked me to do.

The clock struck ten while I was still in my beehive chair, with Robinson Crusoe open on my knee. The sealed packet was locked away for the night. Rosanna had not come home.

"You brought a whole procession after us," said Madame Ratignolle, when they had gone a little distance. "We had taken so much trouble to be alone."

"It was the children who discovered you. I should have passed the bath-house without seeing you."

"You would have discovered Mrs. Pontellier wherever she had hidden herself. You have a talent for it."

Robert laughed, and bent to remove a thorny twig which had caught in the flounces of her skirt. She stood waiting, with her hand resting upon his shoulder.

"Mrs. Pontellier has a way of looking as if she expected something to happen," he said, straightening himself.

"Something is always happening when one has children."

"Oh, I do not mean that sort of thing."

"What sort of thing, then?"

He could not tell her. He had made the observation without knowing precisely what he meant by it, and was a little vexed that she should require an explanation. Madame Ratignolle laughed at his perplexity. Presently she began to speak of a dress which her eldest girl had outgrown, and of the impossibility of obtaining suitable material upon the island.

They walked slowly. At the turn in the path Robert looked back, but the bath-houses were already hidden by the intervening growth.

Edna remained with the children until they had exhausted the pleasure of possessing the tent. Raoul brought her a shell with a broken edge, insisting that it was unlike any shell which had ever been found before. She examined it with the attention he demanded. Then the younger boy discovered that he was hungry, and this discovery passed at once among the others.

She went home with the two little Pontelliers, carrying the shell, which Raoul had entrusted to her. The nurse followed with their shoes and stockings.

A telegram lay upon the table in her room. It had arrived while she was at the beach, and Madame Lebrun had sent it over by a servant. Edna opened it standing near the window.

"Shall not come Saturday or Sunday. Detained by business. All well. Léonce."

She read it a second time, though there was nothing in it which she had failed to understand at the first reading. Léonce had sometimes been detained in this fashion before. He would be annoyed, she knew, at losing his Sunday; and he would expect her to be annoyed also.

She had intended asking him to bring her some drawing-paper. The thought of this small disappointment came to her distinctly, while the larger one remained uncertain. She folded the telegram and put it beneath the little clock upon the mantel.

Raoul called from the gallery to know what she had done with his shell. She had laid it upon the table beside the envelope. When she gave it to him he no longer wanted it, but insisted that she should keep it for him.

At dinner Madame Lebrun expressed her regret at Monsieur Pontellier's absence. Edna said that he was very busy. The words had answered so many questions concerning her husband that she uttered them almost without thinking.

Madame Ratignolle came to the cottage after dinner, bringing a small piece of embroidery which she wished Edna to admire. She found her sitting near the open door, with a book lying face downward upon her knee. The children had gone away with their nurse.

"Robert has been saying something about you," Adèle remarked, after they had examined the embroidery.

"Has he? What has he been saying?"

"That you have a way of looking as if you expected something to happen."

Edna raised her eyes from the fine stitches.

"What a foolish thing for him to say!"

"I asked him what he meant, but he did not know. You should have seen how serious he became when I questioned him."

Adèle repeated the words with the little hesitation Robert had made before saying them. She found some amusement in his inability to explain himself. Edna smiled, but looked away through the doorway.

"I suppose he thinks I am waiting for Léonce," she said.

"But he had not heard of the telegram then."

"No; that is true."

Madame Ratignolle spread the embroidery over her knee and discovered a fault in the pattern which had escaped her before. She held it toward the light, explaining how she might remedy the error without undoing the work. Edna listened and offered an opinion which was of little use.

When her friend had gone, she took up her book. She read the same passage several times, without receiving any impression from it, and finally closed the volume.

The heat had become less oppressive when she went down to the beach in the afternoon. She took her key from its accustomed place, and walked without a sunshade. Robert had gone to the main house after dinner and had not returned. She had seen no reason to seek him.

The path appeared longer when she walked it alone. There was no voice beside her to occupy the intervals between the patches of shade. She heard the dry grasses brushing against her skirt, and once stopped to shake the sand from her shoe.

There was no one upon the gallery of her bath-house. The children's tent was empty, and the lady in black had left the neighboring porch. Farther along the shore a few bathers were coming out of the water.

Edna changed her dress and went down over the warm sand. The wind had fallen somewhat, though the water still broke in short, uneven waves. She waded out slowly, allowing each wave to pass before she advanced.

She had often attempted to swim. Robert and others had instructed her, and she had followed their directions with a care which seemed only to increase her helplessness. There had always been a hand beneath her, or one held out within reach. The withdrawal of that hand had been sufficient to destroy whatever confidence she possessed.

Now she stood in water which reached a little above her waist. She could see the pale sand beneath it when the broken foam had passed. She moved her arms as she had been taught to move them, with no expectation of doing more.

Then she leaned forward.

For a moment she felt the familiar impulse to put down her feet. She resisted it, hardly knowing why, and made another movement with her arms. Her feet had left the bottom. The water supported her. She took a stroke, and another, and felt herself advancing through it.

It was only a little distance. She stood up abruptly, with the water streaming from her face, and looked behind her. The place where she had begun was scarcely farther away than she could have reached with an outstretched arm.

She laughed aloud, a short, surprised laugh which no one heard.

She did not at once try again. The small achievement had disturbed her more than her failures had done. She stood moving her hands beneath the water, feeling its pressure against them. Presently she made a second attempt, but a wave struck her face and she lost the movement. She recovered her footing, coughing and laughing again.

When she left the water she looked toward the distant bathers. They were occupied with their own preparations for going home. There was no one to whom she need explain what she had done, and she felt no wish to explain it.

She dressed slowly. Her hair was wet about her temples, and she pressed it with a towel before putting on her hat.

As she came out upon the gallery, the lady in black approached the adjoining bath-house. She carried her prayer-book and a key attached to a narrow tape. Edna had scarcely exchanged a bow with her during all the weeks they had spent upon the island.

"Will you hold my book a moment, please?" the lady asked. "I cannot turn this key."

It was the first time she had spoken to Edna. Her voice was low and quite ordinary. Edna had somehow expected another sort of voice.

She took the book while its owner tried the lock with both hands. The small volume was warm, and the edges of its leaves were worn soft.

"Thank you," said the lady in black, receiving it again when the door opened. "You have been bathing?"

"Yes."

"The water looks rough to-day."

"It is not so rough as it was this morning."

The lady glanced toward the sea, but made no further remark. Edna went away, wondering whether she had wished to say anything more. Before she reached the path she ceased to wonder, and thought again of the instant when her feet had left the sand.

Robert was at the cottage when she returned. He had brought a newspaper and was amusing the boys by folding it into boats. He asked why she had not sent for him to go bathing.

"I did not think of sending," she answered.

He accepted the reply without complaint and held up a boat for her inspection. She sat down near them. Once she almost told him; but Raoul began an argument concerning the ownership of the largest boat, and the opportunity passed. She was glad afterward that it had passed.

The evening went by in the usual fashion. There was supper, and the children grew sleepy before they would consent to go to bed. Robert lingered a little upon the gallery, then left her to join the people at the house.

Later Edna went into the children's room. They were asleep, and the nurse had put their clothes in order upon a chair. Raoul's shell lay beside his pillow. Edna lowered the lamp and returned to the gallery alone.

The night was warm. She drew her chair forward until she could see a strip of sky between the dark trees. Voices came faintly from the main house; beyond them she heard the water.

She rested her hands upon the arms of the chair. They felt tired, and the slight ache recalled the pressure of the sea against them. She tried to remember how she had moved, but could recover only the sensation of having been supported.

Then Robert's remark returned to her as Adèle had repeated it, with her amused voice and little laugh. Edna sat quite still on the gallery, with the children asleep within, thinking of the look he had observed in her, as if she expected something to happen.