The Thing Beyond Reason A COMPLETE SHORT NOVEL—THE STORY OF THE STRANGE ADVENTURE THAT LED LEXY MORAN TO A HOUSE OF TRAGEDY AND MYSTERY IN THE SUBURBS OF NEW YORK

By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Author of “Angelica,” etc.

THE house was very quiet to-night. There was nothing to disturb Miss Alexandra Moran but the placid ticking of the clock and the faint stir of the curtains at the open window. For that matter, a considerable amount of noise would not have troubled her just then. As she sat at the library table, the light of the shaded lamp shone upon her bright, ruffled head bent over her work in fiercest concentration. She was chewing the end of a badly damaged lead pencil, and she was scowling.

“No!” she said, half aloud. “Won’t do! It can’t be ‘fix’; but, by jiminy, I’ll get it if it takes all night!”

She laid down the pencil and sat back in the chair, with her arms folded. Though her present difficulty concerned nothing more serious than a cross-word puzzle, an observer might have learned a good deal of Miss Moran’s character from her manner of dealing with it. The puzzle itself, with its neat, clear little letters printed in the squares, would have been a revelation that whatever she undertook she did carefully and intelligently—and obstinately.

She was a young little thing, only twenty-three, and quite alone in the world, but not at all dismayed by that. Her father had died some three years ago, and, instead of leaving the snug little fortune she had been taught to expect, he had left nothing at all; so that at twenty she had had her first puzzle to solve—how to keep alive without eating the bread of charity.

Copyright 1926, by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

It was no easy matter for a girl who was still in boarding school, but she had done it. She had come to New York and had found a post as nursery governess, and later as waitress in a tea room, and then in the art department of an enormous store. She had gained no tangible profit from these three years, she had no balance in the bank, but that did not trouble her. She had learned that she could stand on her own feet, that she could trust herself; and with this knowledge and the experience she had had, and her quick wits and splendid health, she felt herself fully armed against the world. Indeed, she had not a care on earth this evening except the cross-word puzzle.

“It must be ‘tocsin,’” she said to herself. “There’s something wrong with the verticals. It can’t be ‘fix,’ and yet—”

The telephone bell rang. Still pondering her problem, Lexy went across the room.

“Is Miss Enderby there?” asked a man’s voice.

“She’s out,” answered Lexy cheerfully.

“No!” said the man’s voice. “She can’t—I—for God’s sake, where’s Miss Enderby?”

“She’s out,” Lexy repeated, startled. “She went to the opera with her mother and father.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Mrs. Enderby’s secretary.”

“Look here! Didn’t Miss Enderby say anything? Isn’t there any sort of message for me?”

“Nothing that I know of. The servants have gone to bed, but I’ll ask them, if it’s anything important.”

“No!” said the voice. “Don’t! No, never mind! Good-by!”

“That’s queer!” said Lexy to herself, as she walked away from the instrument, and then she dismissed the matter from her mind. “None of my business!” she thought, and returned to her puzzle.

Suddenly an inspiration came.

“It is ‘fix’!” she cried. “And it’s not ‘tocsin,’ but ‘toxins’! Hurrah!”

This practically completed the puzzle, and she began to fill in the empty squares with the peculiar satisfaction of the cross-word enthusiast. It was perfect, now, and she liked things to be perfect.

As she leaned back, with a contented sigh, the clock struck twelve.

“Golly! I didn’t realize it was so late!” she reflected. “Queer time for any one to ring up!”

She frowned again. Her special problem solved, she began to take more interest in other affairs; and the more she thought of the telephone incident, the more it amazed her. Caroline Enderby wasn’t like other girls. The mere fact of a man’s telephoning to her at all was strange and indeed unprecedented.

“And he was badly upset, too,” thought Lexy. “He asked if she left a message for him. Think of Caroline Enderby leaving a message for a man!”

She began to feel impatient for Caroline’s return.

“I’ll tell her when we’re alone,” she thought; “and she’ll have to explain—a little, anyhow.”

Lexy wanted an explanation very much, because she was fond of Caroline, and very sorry for her.

Mrs. Enderby was a Frenchwoman of the old-fashioned, conservative type, with the most rigid ideas about the bringing up of a young girl, and her husband—Lexy had often wondered what Mr. Enderby had been before his marriage, for now he was nothing but a grave and dignified echo of his wife. Between them, they had educated Caroline in a disastrous fashion. She had never even been to school. She had had governesses at home, and when a male teacher came in, for music or painting lessons, Mrs. Enderby had always sat in the room with her child. Caroline never went out of the house alone. She was utterly cut off from the normal life of other girls. She was a gentle, lovely creature—a little unreal, Lexy had thought her, at first; and she, at first, had been afraid of Lexy.

Mrs. Enderby had advertised for a secretary, and Lexy had answered the advertisement. Mrs. Enderby had wanted personal references, and Lexy had supplied them, some five or six, of the highest quality. Mrs. Enderby had investigated them with remarkable thoroughness, and had asked Lexy many questions. Indeed, it had taken ten days to satisfy her that Miss Moran was a fit person to come into her house, and Lexy had lived under her roof and under her eagle eye for a month before she was allowed to be alone with Caroline. After that first month, however, Mrs. Enderby had made up her mind that Lexy was to be trusted, and the thin pretext of “secretary” was dropped.

Mrs. Enderby suffered from a not uncommon form of insomnia. She could not sleep at convenient hours—at night, for instance—but could and did sleep at very inconvenient hours during the day; and what she wanted was not a secretary, but a companion for her daughter during these hours.

She realized, too, that even the most strictly brought up jeune fille needed some sort of youthful society, and in Lexy she had found pretty well what she wanted—a well mannered, well bred young woman of unimpeachable honesty. So she had permitted Lexy and Caroline to go shopping alone, and sometimes to a matinée or to a tea room. She asked them shrewd questions when they came home, and their answers satisfied her perfectly. They had never even spoken to a man!

“And yet,” thought Miss Moran, “somehow Caroline has been carrying on with some one, without even me finding out! I didn’t know she had it in her!”

Lexy yawned mightily. She was growing very sleepy, but not for worlds would she go to bed until she had seen Caroline. She lay down on the divan, her hands clasped under her head, and let all sorts of little idle thoughts drift through her mind. Now and then a taxi went by, but this street in the East Sixties was a very quiet one. The house was so very still, and there was nothing in her own young heart to trouble her. Her eyes closed.

She was half asleep when the sound of Mrs. Enderby’s voice in the hall brought her to her feet. It was a penetrating voice, with a trace of foreign accent, and it was not a voice that Lexy loved. She went out of the library into the hall.

“Did you enjoy—” she began politely, and then stopped short. “But where’s Caroline?” she cried.

“Caroline? But at home, of course,” answered Mrs. Enderby.

“At home? Here?”

“But certainly! She had a headache. At the last moment she decided not to go with us. You were not here when we left, Miss Moran.”

“I know,” murmured Lexy. “I had just run out to the drug store; but—”

“She went directly to bed,” Mrs. Enderby continued. “I thought, however, that she would have sent for you during the course of the evening.”

“Oh, I see!” said Lexy casually.

At heart, however, she was curiously uneasy. Mr. Enderby stopped for a moment, to give her some kindly information about the opera they had heard. Then he and his wife ascended the stairs, followed by Lexy; and with every step her uneasiness grew. She was sure that Caroline would have sent for her if she had been in the house.

Mrs. Enderby paused outside her child’s door.

“The light is out,” she said. “She will be asleep. I shall not disturb her. Good night, Miss Moran!”

“Good night, Mrs. Enderby!” Lexy answered, and went into her own room.

She gave Mrs. Enderby twenty minutes to get safely stowed away; then she went out quietly into the hall, to Caroline’s room. She knocked softly; there was no answer. She turned the handle and went in; the room was dark and very still. She switched on the light.

It was as she had expected—the room was empty. Caroline was not there.

II

Lexy’s first impulse was to close the door of that empty room, and to hold her tongue. It seemed to her that it would be treachery to Caroline to tell Mrs. Enderby. She and Caroline were both young, both of the same generation; they ought to stand loyally together against the tyrannical older people.

“Because, golly, what a row there’d be if Mrs. Enderby ever knew she’d gone out!” Lexy thought.

That was how she saw it, at first. Caroline had pretended to have a headache so that she would be left behind, and would get a chance to slip out alone. It was simply a lark. Lexy had known such things to happen often before, at boarding school; and the unthinkable and impossible thing was for one girl to tell on another.

“She’ll be back soon,” thought Lexy, “and she’ll tell me all about it.”

So she went into Caroline’s room, to wait. It was a charming room, pink and white, like Caroline herself. Lexy turned on the switch, and two rose-shaded lamps blossomed out like flowers. She sat down on a chaise longue, and stretched herself out, yawning. On the desk before her was Caroline’s writing apparatus, a quill pen of old rose, an ivory desk set, everything so dainty and orderly; only poor Caroline had no friends, and never had letters to write or to answer.

“I wonder who on earth that was on the telephone,” Lexy reflected. “It was queer—just on the only night of her life when she’d ever gone out on her own. And he sounded so terribly upset! It was queer. Perhaps—”

She was aware of a fast-growing oppression. The influence of Caroline’s room was beginning to tell upon her. Caroline didn’t understand about larks. She wasn’t that sort of girl. Quiet, shy, and patient, she had never shown any trace of resentment against her restricted life, or any desire for the good times that other girls of her age enjoyed. The more Lexy thought about it, the more clearly she realized the strangeness of all this, and the more uneasy she became.

When the little Dresden clock on the mantelpiece struck one, it came as a shock. Lexy sprang to her feet and looked about the room, filled with unreasoning fear. One o’clock, and Caroline hadn’t come back! Suppose—suppose she never came back?

Lexy dismissed that idea with healthy scorn. Things like that didn’t happen; and yet—what was it that gave to the pink and white lamplit room such an air of being deserted?

“Why, the photographs are gone!” she cried.

She noticed now for the first time that the photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Enderby in silver frames, which had always stood on the writing desk, were not standing there now.

She turned to the bureau. Caroline’s silver toilet set was not there. She made a rapid survey of the room, and she made sure of her suspicions. Caroline had gone deliberately, taking with her all the things she would need on a short trip.

“I’ve got to tell Mrs. Enderby now,” she thought. “It’s only fair.”

She went out into the corridor, closing the door behind her, and turned toward Mrs. Enderby’s room. She was very, very reluctant, for she dreaded to break the peace of the quiet house by this dramatic announcement. She hated anything in the nature of the sensational. Level-headed, cool, practical, her instinct was to make light of all this, to insist that nothing was really wrong. Caroline had gone, and that was that.

“There’s going to be such a fuss!” she thought. “If there’s anything I loathe, it’s a fuss.”

And all the time, under her cool and sensible exterior, she was frightened. She felt that after all she was very young, and very inexperienced, in a world where things—anything—things beyond her knowledge—might happen.

She knocked upon the door lightly—so lightly that no one heard her; and she had to knock again. This time Mrs. Enderby opened the door.

“Well?” she asked, not very amiably.

“I thought I ought to tell you—” Lexy began; and still she hesitated, moved by the unaccountable feeling that this might be treachery to Caroline.

“Tell me what?” asked Mrs. Enderby. “Come, if you please, Miss Moran! Tell me at once!”

“Caroline’s gone.”

The words were spoken. Lexy waited in great alarm, wondering if Mrs. Enderby would faint or scream.

The lady did neither. She came out into the corridor, shutting the door of her room behind her, and her first word and her only word was:

“Hush!”

Then she glanced about her at the closed doors, and, taking Lexy’s arm in a firm grip, hurried her to Caroline’s room. Not until they were shut in there did she speak again.

“Now tell me!” she said. “Speak very low. You said—Caroline has gone?”

“Yes,” said Lexy. “I came in here after you’d gone to bed, and—you can see for yourself—the bed hasn’t been slept in. She’s taken her things—her brush and comb and—”

“And she told you—what?”

“Me? Why, nothing!” answered Lexy, in surprise. “I didn’t see her. I haven’t seen her since dinner.”

“But you know,” said Mrs. Enderby. “You know where she has gone.”

She spoke with cool certainty, and her black eyes were fixed upon Lexy with a far from pleasant expression.

Lexy looked back at her with equal steadiness.

“Mrs. Enderby,” she said, “I don’t know.”

Mrs. Enderby shrugged her shoulders.

“Very well!” she said. “You do not know exactly where she has gone. Bien, alors! You guess, eh?”

“No,” answered Lexy, bewildered. “I don’t. I can’t.”

“She has spoken to you of some—friend?”

Seeing Lexy still frankly bewildered, Mrs. Enderby lost her patience.

“The man!” she said. “Who is the man?”

“I never heard Caroline speak of any man,” said Lexy.

She spoke firmly enough, and she was telling the truth; but she remembered that telephone call, and the memory brought a faint flush into her cheeks. Mrs. Enderby did not fail to notice it.

“Listen!” she said. “There is one thing you can do—only one thing. You can hold your tongue. Tell no one. Let no one know that Caroline is not here. You understand?”

“But aren’t you going to—”

“I am going to do nothing. You understand—nothing. There is to be no scandal in my house.”

“But, Mrs. Enderby!”

“Hush! No one must know of this. To-morrow morning I shall have a letter from Caroline.”

“Oh!” said Lexy, with a sigh of genuine relief. “Oh, then you know where she’s gone!”

“I?” replied Mrs. Enderby. “I know nothing. This has come to me from a clear sky. I have always tried to safeguard my child. I—”

She paused for a moment, and for the first time Lexy pitied her.

“It is the American blood in her,” Mrs. Enderby went on. “No French girl would treat her parents so; but in this country—She has gone with some fortune hunter. To-morrow I shall have a letter that she is married. ‘Please forgive me, chère Maman,’ she will say. ‘I am so happy. I, at nineteen, and of an ignorance the most complete, have made my choice without you.’ That is the American way, is it not? That is your ‘romance,’ eh? My one child—”

Her voice broke.

“No more!” she said. “It is finished. But—attend, Miss Moran! There must be no scandal. No one is to know that she is not here.”

She turned and walked out of the room. Lexy sank into a chair.

“I don’t care!” she said to herself. “She’s wrong—I know it! It’s not what she thinks. Caroline’s not like that. Something dreadful has happened!”

III

It seemed perfectly natural to be awakened in the morning by Mrs. Enderby’s hand on her shoulder, and to look up into Mrs. Enderby’s flashing black eyes. Lexy had gone to sleep dominated by the thought of that masterful woman. She vaguely remembered having dreamed of her, and when she opened her eyes—there she was.

“Get up!” said Mrs. Enderby in a low voice. “Go into Caroline’s room. When Annie comes with the breakfast tray, take it from her at the door. I have told her that Caroline is ill with a headache. You understand?”

“Yes, Mrs. Enderby,” answered Lexy.

She sprang out of bed and began to dress, filled with an unreasoning sense of haste. It wasn’t a dream, then—it was true. Caroline had gone, and there was something Lexy must do for her. She could not have explained what this something was, but it oppressed and worried her. She could not rid herself of the feeling that she was not being loyal to Caroline.

“And yet,” she thought, “I had to tell Mrs. Enderby she wasn’t there. I suppose I ought to have told her about that telephone call, too, but I hate to do it! I know Caroline wouldn’t like me to; and what good can it do, anyhow? Whoever it was, he didn’t know where she was. It was the queerest thing—a man asking, ‘For God’s sake, where’s Miss Enderby?’ when she wasn’t here! No, Mrs. Enderby is wrong. Caroline hasn’t just gone away of her own accord. She’s not that sort of girl. Something has happened!”

Lexy finished dressing and went into Caroline’s room. In the gay April sunshine, that dainty room seemed almost unbearably forlorn.

She went over to the window and looked down into the street. People were passing by, and taxis, and private cars—all the ordinary, casual, cheerful daily life at which Caroline Enderby had so often looked out, like a poor enchanted princess in a tower. A wave of pity and affection rose in Lexy’s heart.

“Oh, poor Caroline!” she said to herself. “Such a dull, miserable life! I do wish—”

There was a knock at the door, and she hurried across the room to open it. The parlor maid stood there with a tray. Lexy took it from her with a pleasant “good morning,” and closed the door again. Caroline’s breakfast! There was something disturbing in the sight of that carefully prepared tray, ready for the girl who was not there.

The door opened—without a preliminary knock, this time—and Mrs. Enderby came in. She turned the key behind her, and, without a word, went over to the bed and pulled off the covers. Then she went into the adjoining bathroom and started the water running in the tub. This done, she sat down at the table and began to eat the breakfast on the tray.

Lexy stood watching all this with indignation and a sort of horror.

“All she cares about is keeping up appearances,” the girl thought. “The only thing that worries her is that some one might find out. She doesn’t know where poor Caroline is—and she can sit down and eat! I’m comparatively a stranger, and even I—”

Lexy was an honest soul, however. The fragrance of coffee and rolls reached her, and she admitted in her heart that she, too, could eat, if she had a chance.

Mrs. Enderby was not going to give her a chance just yet. She finished her meal and rose.

“Now!” she said. “Just what is gone from here? We shall look.”

So they looked, in the wardrobe, in the drawers, even in the orderly desk. Very little was gone.

“And now,” said Mrs. Enderby, “you lent her—how much money, Miss Moran?”

“I never lent her a penny in my life,” replied Lexy.

Mrs. Enderby’s tone aroused a spirit of obstinate defiance in her. Those flashing black eyes were fixed upon her with an expression which did not please Lexy, and Lexy looked back with an expression which did not please Mrs. Enderby.

“So you will not tell me what you know!” said Mrs. Enderby, with a chilly smile.

It was on the tip of Lexy’s tongue to say, with considerable warmth, that she had told all she knew; but the memory of the telephone call checked her.

“If I tell her about that,” she thought, “she’ll just say, ‘Ah, I thought so!’ And she’ll be surer than ever that Caroline has eloped with a fortune hunter, and she won’t make any effort to find her. No—I’m not going to tell her until she gets really frightened.” Aloud she said: “I’ll do anything in the world that I can do, Mrs. Enderby, to help you find Caroline.”

“It is not necessary,” said Mrs. Enderby. “I shall have her letter.”

There was another tap at the door. Mrs. Enderby closed the door leading into the bathroom, and then called:

“Come in!”

The parlor maid entered.

“You may take away the tray,” her mistress said graciously. “Miss Enderby has finished.”

Again a feeling that was almost horror came over Lexy. There was the bed Caroline had slept in, there was the breakfast Caroline had eaten, there was Caroline’s bath running—and Caroline wasn’t there! Lexy wanted to get out of that room and away from Mrs. Enderby.

“Do you mind if I go down and get my own breakfast now?” she asked, when the parlor maid had gone out with the tray.

“But certainly not!” Mrs. Enderby blandly consented. “We shall go down together.”

She turned off the water in the bath, and, following Lexy out of the room, locked the door on the outside. The girl dropped behind her as they descended the stairs, and studied the stout, dignified figure before her with indignant interest.

“A mother!” she thought. “A mother, behaving like this! How long is she going to wait for her letter, I wonder? Well, if she won’t do anything, then, by jiminy, I will!”

A fresh example of Mrs. Enderby’s remarkable strength of mind awaited them. Mr. Enderby was already seated at the table in the dining room. As his wife entered, he rose, with his invariable politeness, and one glance at his ruddy, cheerful face convinced Lexy that he knew nothing of what had happened.

“Caroline has a headache,” Mrs. Enderby explained. “It will be better for her to rest for a little.”

“Ah! Too bad!” said he. “Don’t think she gets out in the air enough. Er—good morning, Miss Moran!”

Lexy almost forgot to answer him, so intent was she upon watching Mrs. Enderby open her letters. There must, she thought, be some change in that calm, pale face when she didn’t find a letter from Caroline, there must be something to break this inhuman tranquillity.

But nothing broke it. Mr. Enderby ate his breakfast, and his wife chatted affably with him while she glanced over her mail. The sunshine poured into the room, gleaming on silver and linen, and on the cheerful young parlor maid moving quietly about her duties. It was a morning just like other mornings; and, in spite of herself, Lexy’s feeling of dread and oppression began to lighten. Mr. Enderby was so thoroughly unperturbed, Mrs. Enderby was so serene and majestic, the house was so bright and pleasant in the spring morning, that it was hard to believe that anything could be really amiss.

“But I don’t care!” she thought sturdily. “I know there is!”

Mr. Enderby finished his breakfast and rose, and, as usual, his wife accompanied him to the front door. Alone in the dining room, Lexy made haste to finish her own meal. Just as she pushed back her chair, Mrs. Enderby returned.

“I shall ring, Annie,” she told the parlor maid, and the girl disappeared. Then she turned to Lexy. “The letter has come,” she said.

Lexy stared at her with such an expression of amazement and dismay that Mrs. Enderby smiled.

“You are very young,” she said. “You wish always for the dramatic. When you have lived as long as I, you will see that such things do not happen.”

She spoke kindly, and Lexy saw in her dark eyes a look of weariness and pain.

“No, my child,” she went on. “In this life it is always the same things that happen again and again. At twenty, one breaks the heart for a man; at forty, one breaks the heart for one’s child. There is only that—and money. Love and money—nothing else!”

Lexy felt extraordinarily sorry for Mrs. Enderby; but even yet she couldn’t quite believe that Caroline could have done such a thing.

“But do you mean that she’s really—that she’s—” she began.

“See, then!” said Mrs. Enderby. “Here is the letter!”

Lexy took it from her, and read:

Chere Maman:

I only beg you and papa to forgive me for what I have done; but I knew that if I told you, you would not have let me go. When you get this I shall be married. To-morrow I shall write again, to tell you where I am, and to beg you to let me bring my husband to you.

Oh, please, dear, dear mother and father, forgive me!

Your loving, loving daughter, Caroline.

“You see!” said Mrs. Enderby. “It is as I told you.”

There were tears in Lexy’s eyes as she put the letter back into the envelope.

“It doesn’t seem a bit like Caroline, though,” she remarked.

Mrs. Enderby smiled again, faintly, and held out her hand for the letter. Lexy returned it to her, with an almost mechanical glance at the postmark—“Wyngate, Connecticut.”

All her defiance had vanished. She was obliged to admit now that Mrs. Enderby was wise, and that she herself was—

“A little fool!” said Lexy candidly to herself.

IV

“Do you mind if I go out for a walk?” asked the crestfallen Lexy; for that was her instinct in any sort of trouble—to get out into the fresh air and walk.

“No,” answered Mrs. Enderby; “but I shall ask you to return in half an hour. There is much to be done.”

“Done!” cried Lexy. “But what can be done—now?”

“That I shall tell you when you return,” said Mrs. Enderby. “In the meantime, I trust you to say nothing of all this to any person whatever. You understand, Miss Moran?”

Miss Moran certainly did not understand, but she gave her promise to keep silent, and, putting on her hat and coat, hurried out of the house. Mighty glad she was to get out, too!

“But why make a mystery of it like this?” she thought. “Every one has to know, sooner or later, and it’s so—so ghastly, pretending that Caroline’s there! Oh, it doesn’t seem possible, Caroline running off like that, and I never even dreaming she was the least bit interested in any man! I don’t see how she could have seen any one or written to any one without my knowing it. It doesn’t seem possible!”

She had reached the corner of Fifth Avenue, and was waiting for a halt in the traffic, when she became aware of a young man who was standing near her and staring at her. She glanced carelessly at him, and he took off his hat, but he got no acknowledgment of his salute. He was a stranger, and she meant him to remain a stranger. The bright-haired, sturdy little Lexy was a very pretty girl, and she was not unaccustomed to strange young men who stared. She knew how to handle them.

As she crossed the avenue, he crossed, too. When she entered the park, he followed. Now Lexy was never tolerant of this sort of thing, and to-day, in her anxiety and distress, she was less so than ever. She turned her head and looked the young man squarely in the face with a scornful and frigid look; and he took off his hat again!

“Just you say one word,” said she to herself, “and I’ll call a policeman!”

Yet, as she walked briskly on, something in the man’s expression haunted her. He didn’t look like that sort of man. His sunburned face somehow seemed to her a very honest one, and the expression on it was not at all flirtatious, but terribly troubled and unhappy.

“Perhaps he thinks he knows me,” she thought. “Well, he doesn’t, and he’s not going to, either!”

And she dismissed him from her mind.

“When did Caroline go?” she pondered, continuing her own miserable train of thought. “While I was doing cross words in the library? If she went out by the front door, she must have gone right past the library. She must have known I was there—and not even to say good-by!”

It hurt. She had grown very fond of the shy, quiet Caroline, and she had firmly believed that Caroline was fond of her. What is more, she had thought Caroline trusted her.

“She didn’t though. All the time, when we were so friendly together, she must have been planning this and—what?”

She stopped short, her dark brows meeting in a fierce frown, for the unknown man had come up beside her and spoken to her.

“Excuse me!” he said.

Lexy only looked at him, but he did not wither and perish under her scorn.

“I’ve got to speak to you,” he said. “It’s—look here! I’ve been waiting outside the house all morning. Look here, please! You’re Lexy, aren’t you?”

This was a little too much!

“If you don’t stop bothering me this instant—” she began hotly, but he paid no heed.

“Where’s Miss Enderby?” he cried.

Lexy grew very pale. Those were the words she had heard over the telephone last night, and this was the same voice.

For a moment she was silent, staring at him, while he looked back at her, his blue eyes searching her face with a look of desperate entreaty. All her doubts vanished. She had not been wrong. She had been right—she was sure of it. She knew that something had happened—something inexplicable and dreadful.

“Please tell me!” he said. “You don’t know—you can’t know—she told me you were her friend.”

“But who are you?” cried Lexy.

His face flushed under the sunburn.

“I—” he began, and stopped. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” he went on. “I’d like to, but, you see, I can’t. If you’ll just tell me where Car—Miss Enderby is! She’s safe at home, isn’t she? She—of course she is! She must be! She—she is, isn’t she?”

“Well,” said Lexy slowly, “I don’t see how I can tell you anything at all. I don’t know what right you have to ask any questions. I don’t know who you are, or anything about you.”

“No,” he replied, “I know that; but, after all, it’s not much of a question, is it—just if Miss Enderby’s all right?”

Lexy felt very sorry for him, in his obvious struggle to speak quietly and reasonably. She wanted to answer him promptly and candidly, for his sake and for her own, because she felt sure that he could tell her something about Caroline; but she had promised Mrs. Enderby to say nothing.

“It’s so silly!” she thought, exasperated. “If I could tell him, I might find out—”

Find out what? Hadn’t Caroline written to say that she had gone away to get married? In a day or two, probably to-morrow, they would learn all the details from Caroline herself. This unhappy young man couldn’t know anything. Indeed, he was asking for information.

Who could he possibly be? A rival suitor? Lexy remembered Caroline’s pitifully restricted life. Two suitors of whom she had never heard? It wasn’t possible!

“No,” she thought. “There’s something queer—something wrong!”

“Look here!” the young man said again. “Aren’t you going to answer me? Just tell me she’s all right, and—”

“What makes you think she isn’t?” asked Lexy cautiously.

He looked straight into her face.

“You’re playing with me,” he said. “You’re fencing with me, to make me give myself away; and it’s a pretty rotten thing to do!”

“Rotten?” Lexy repeated indignantly. “Rotten, not to answer questions from a perfect stranger?”

“Yes,” he said, “it is; because that’s a question you could answer for any one. I’ve only asked you if Miss Enderby is—all right.”

This high-handed tone didn’t suit Lexy at all. He was actually presuming to be angry, and that made her angry.

“I shan’t tell you anything at all,” she said, and began to walk on again.

He put on his hat and turned away, but in a moment he was back at her side.

“Look here!” he said. “Caroline told me you were her friend. She said you could be trusted. All right—I am trusting you. I’ve felt, all along, that there was—something wrong. I’ve got to know! If you’ll give me your word that she’s safe at home, I’ll clear out, and apologize for having made a first-class fool of myself; but if she’s not, I ought to know!”

Lexy stopped again. Their eyes met in a long, steady glance.

“I can’t answer any questions this morning,” she told him. “I promised I wouldn’t.”

“Then there is something wrong!” the young man exclaimed.

He was silent for a long time, staring at the ground, and Lexy waited, with a fast beating heart, for some word that would enlighten her. At last he looked up.

“I’ve got to trust you,” he said simply. “Caroline meant to tell you, anyhow. You see”—he paused—“I’m Charles Houseman, the man she’s going to marry.”

“Oh!” cried Lexy.

“Now you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

She stared and stared at him, filled with amazement and pity. Such a nice-looking, straightforward, manly sort of fellow—and such a look of pain and bewilderment in his blue eyes!

“But—did she say she would marry you?”

“Of course she did! She—look here! You don’t know what I’ve been through. It was I who telephoned last night. I—”

“But why did you? Oh, please tell me! I am Caroline’s friend—truly her friend. I want to understand!”

“All right!” he said. “I telephoned because I was waiting for her, and she didn’t come.”

“Waiting for—Caroline?”

“We had arranged to get married last night. She was to meet me, but she didn’t come,” he said, a little unsteadily. “Perhaps she just changed her mind. Perhaps she doesn’t want to see me any more. If that’s the case, I’ll trust you not to mention anything about me—to any one. You see now, don’t you, that I—I had to know?”

Lexy’s eyes filled with tears. Moved by a generous impulse, she held out her hand.

“I’m so awfully sorry!” she cried.

“Why? You mean—for God’s sake, tell me! You mean she has changed her mind?”

“I can’t tell you—not now.”

“You can’t leave it at that,” said he. He had taken her outstretched hand, and he held it tight. “I ought to know what has happened. I can’t believe that Caroline would let me down like that. She—she’s not that sort of girl. Something’s gone wrong. She wouldn’t leave me waiting and waiting there for her at Wyngate.”

“Wyngate!” cried Lexy. “But that was—”

She stopped abruptly. Caroline’s letter had been postmarked “Wyngate.” She had gone there to meet—some one. She had married—some one.

“I can’t understand,” Lexy went on. “It’s terrible! I can’t tell you now; but I’ll meet you here this afternoon, after lunch—about two o’clock—and I’ll tell you then.”

She turned away, then, in haste to get back to Mrs. Enderby, but he stopped her.

“Remember!” he said sternly. “I’ve trusted you. If Caroline hasn’t told her people about me, you mustn’t mention my name. I gave her my word that I would let her do the telling. I didn’t want it that way, but I promised her, and you’ve got to do the same. If she hasn’t told about me, you’re not to.”

“Oh, Lord!” cried poor Lexy. “Well, all right, I won’t! Now, for goodness’ sake, go away, and let me alone—to do the best I can!”

V

Lexy was late. The half hour had been considerably exceeded when she ran up the steps of the Enderbys house. She rang the bell, and the door was opened promptly by Annie.

“Mrs. Enderby would like to see you at once, miss,” the parlor maid said primly.

But Lexy stopped to look covertly at Annie. Did she know anything? It was possible. Anything was possible now. Lexy was obliged to admit, however, that Annie had no appearance of guilt or mystery. A brisk and sober woman of middle age, who had been with the family for nearly ten years, she looked nothing more or less than disapproving because this young person had presumed to keep Mrs. Enderby waiting for several minutes.

“Anyhow, I can’t ask her,” thought Lexy. “That’s the worst part of all this—I can’t ask anybody anything without breaking a promise to somebody else; and yet everybody ought to know everything!”

In miserable perplexity, she went upstairs to Mrs. Enderby’s sitting room. Only one thing was clear in her mind, and that was that she must be freed from her weak-minded promise not to mention Caroline’s absence.

“And that’s not going to be easy,” she reflected, “when I can’t explain to her. There’ll be a row. Well, I don’t care!”

She did care, however. She respected Mrs. Enderby, and in her secret heart she was a little afraid of her. She felt very young, very crude and blundering, in the presence of that masterful woman; and she doubted her own wisdom.

“But what can I do?” she thought. “He said he trusted me. I can’t tell her! No, first I’ll get her to let me off that promise, and I’ll go and tell that young man. Then I’ll make him let me off, and I’ll come and tell her. Golly, how I hate all this fool mystery!”

Mrs. Enderby was writing at her desk as Lexy entered the room. She glanced up, unsmiling.

“You are late,” she said. “I asked you to return in half an hour.”

“I’m sorry,” Lexy replied meekly.

“Very well! Now you will please to come with me.”

She rose, and Lexy followed her down the hall to Caroline’s room. Mrs. Enderby unlocked the door, and, when they had entered, locked the door on the inside.

“In fifteen minutes the car is coming,” she said. “I wish you to put on Caroline’s hat and coat and a veil, and leave the house with me.”

“You mean you want me to pretend I’m Caroline?” cried Lexy.

“I wish it to be thought that you are Caroline,” Mrs. Enderby corrected her. “Please waste no time. The car will be here—”

“Mrs. Enderby, I—I can’t do it!”

“You can, Miss Moran, and I think you will.”

But Lexy was pretty close to desperation now. Her honest and vigorous spirit was entangled in a network of promises and obligations and deceptions, and she could not see how to free herself; but she would not passively submit.

“No,” she said, “I can’t. I’ve found out something—I can’t tell you about it just now, but this afternoon I hope—”

“This afternoon is another thing,” said Mrs. Enderby. “In the meantime—”

“But it’s important! It’s—”

“You think I do not know? You think this letter sets my mind at rest?” Mrs. Enderby demanded, with one of her sudden flashes of temper. “That is imbecile! I know how serious it is that my child should leave me like this; but I know what is my duty—first, to my husband. That first, I tell you! It is for me to see that no disgrace comes upon his house, no scandal—that first! Then, next, I must see to it that the way is left open for Caroline to come back—if she wishes.” She came close to Lexy, and fixed those black eyes of hers upon the girl’s face. “I tell you, Miss Moran, there will be no scandal!”

In spite of herself, Lexy was impressed.

“But suppose—” she began.

“No—we shall not suppose. I have told the servants that to-day Miss Enderby goes into the country, to visit her old governess for a few days. Very well—they shall see her go. If there is no other letter to-morrow, I shall tell Mr. Enderby.”

“Doesn’t he know?”

“Please make haste, Miss Moran!” said Mrs. Enderby.

As if hypnotized, Lexy began to dress herself in Caroline’s clothes; but, as she glanced in the mirror to adjust the close-fitting little hat, the monstrousness of the whole thing overwhelmed her. She had so often seen Caroline in this hat and coat!

“Oh, I can’t!” she cried. “I can’t! Suppose something terrible has happened to her, and I’m—”

“Keep quiet!” said Mrs. Enderby fiercely. “I tell you it shall be so! Now, the veil. No, not like that—not as if you were disguising yourself! So!”

She unlocked the door, and, taking Lexy by the arm, went out into the hall. Together they descended the stairs, Mrs. Enderby chatting volubly in French, as she was wont to do with her daughter. None of the servants would think of interrupting her, or of staring at her companion. It was an ordinary, everyday scene. Annie was crossing the lower hall.

“Miss Moran will be out all day,” said Mrs. Enderby. “There will be no one at home for lunch.”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Annie.

The maid would not notice when—or if—Miss Moran went out. There was nothing to arouse suspicion in any one.

They went out to the car. A small trunk was strapped on behind. Everything had been prepared for Miss Enderby’s visit to the country. The chauffeur opened the door and touched his cap respectfully, the two women got in, and off they went.

“Now you will please to dismiss this subject from your mind,” said Mrs. Enderby. “I do not wish to talk of it.” She spoke kindly now. “You will have a pleasant day in the country.”

“Day!” said Lexy. “But what time will we get back?”

“Before dinner.”

“Oh, I’ve got to get back this afternoon! I’ve got to see some one! It’s important—terribly important!”

Mrs. Enderby smiled faintly.

“The chauffeur must see you descend at Miss Craigie’s house,” she said. “Once we are there, I have a hat and coat of your own in the trunk. I shall explain what is necessary to Miss Craigie, who is very discreet, very devoted. You can change then, but you must go home quietly by train; and I think there are not many trains.”

Lexy had a vision of the young man waiting and waiting for her in the park that afternoon—the young man who had trusted her, who was waiting in such miserable anxiety for some news of Caroline.

“Mrs. Enderby,” she protested, “I can’t come with you. I’ve got to get back this afternoon.”

“No,” said Mrs. Enderby.

Lexy made a creditable effort to master her anger and distress.

“It’s important—to you,” she said. “I have to see some one about Caroline—some one who can tell you something.”

This time Mrs. Enderby made no answer at all. There she sat, stout, majestic, absolutely impervious, looking out of the window as if Lexy did not exist. What was to be done? She couldn’t communicate with the chauffeur except by leaning across Mrs. Enderby, and a struggle with that lady was out of the question.

“But I’m not going on!” she thought.

She waited until the car slowed down at a crossing. Then she made a sudden dart for the door. With equal suddenness Mrs. Enderby seized her arm.

“Sit down!” she said, in a singularly unpleasant whisper. “There shall be no scene. Sit down, I tell you!”

“I won’t!” replied Lexy, but just then the car started forward, and she fell back on the seat.

“You will come with me,” said Mrs. Enderby.

That overbearing tone, that grasp on her arm, were very nearly too much for Lexy. She had always been quick-tempered. All the Morans were, and were perversely proud of it, too; but Lexy had learned many lessons in a hard school. She had learned to control her temper, and she did so now. She was silent for a time.

“All right!” she agreed, at last. “I’ll come. I don’t see what else I can do—now; but after this I’ll have to use my own judgment, Mrs. Enderby.”

“You have none,” Mrs. Enderby told her calmly.

Lexy clenched her hands, and again was silent for a moment.

“I mean—” she began.

“I know very well what you mean,” said Mrs. Enderby. “You mean that you will keep faith with me no longer. I saw that. You wished to run off and tell your story to some one this afternoon. I stopped that. After this, I cannot stop you any longer. You will tell, but I think no one will listen to you. I shall deny it, and no one will be likely to listen to the word of a discharged employee.”

Lexy had grown very pale.

“I see!” she said slowly. “Then you’re going to—”

“You are discharged,” interrupted Mrs. Enderby, “because I do not like to have my daughter’s companion running into the park to meet a young man.”

“I see!” said Lexy again.

And nothing more. All the warmth of her anger had gone, and in its place had come an overwhelming depression. For all her sturdiness and courage, she was young and generous and sensitive, and those words of Mrs. Enderby’s hurt her cruelly.

She sat very still, looking out of the window. They had left the city now, and were on the Boston road. It was a sweet, fresh April day, and under a bright and windy sky the countryside was showing the first soft green of spring.

Lexy remembered. She remembered the things she had so valiantly tried to forget—the dear, happy days that were past, spring days like this, in her own home, with her mother and father; early morning rides on her little black mare, and coming home to the old house, to the people who loved her; her father’s laugh, her mother’s wonderful smile, the friendly faces of the servants.

She was not old enough or wise enough as yet, for these memories to be a solace to her. They were pain—nothing but pain. There was no one now to love her, or even to be interested in her. She had cut herself off from her old friends and gone out alone, like a poor, rash, gallant little knight-errant, into the wide world to seek her fortune. Caroline had disappeared, and Mrs. Enderby had dismissed her with savage contempt. She would have to go out now and look for a new job.

She straightened her shoulders.

“This won’t do!” she said to herself. “It’s disgusting, mawkish self-pity, and nothing else. I’m young and healthy, and I can always find a job. What I want to think about now is Caroline, and what I ought to do for her.”

So she did begin to think about Caroline. The first thought that came into her head was such an extraordinary one that it startled her.

“Anyhow, she’s a pretty lucky girl!”

Lucky? Caroline, who had lived like a prisoner, and who had now so strangely disappeared, lucky—simply because a sunburned, blue-eyed young man was so miserably anxious about her?

“I suppose he’s thinking about her this minute,” Lexy reflected; “and I’m sure nobody in the world is thinking about me. Well, I don’t care!”

VI

The car took them to a drowsy little village, and stopped before a small cottage on a side street. Mrs. Enderby got out, followed by Lexy, the living ghost of Caroline. Side by side they went up the flagged path and on to the porch. Mrs. Enderby rang the bell, and in a moment the door was opened by a thin, sandy-haired woman in spectacles.

“Mrs. Enderby!” she cried, her plain face lighting up in a delighted smile. “And my dear little Caroline!” She held out her hand to Lexy, and suddenly her face changed. “But—” she began.

Mrs. Enderby pushed her gently inside and closed the door.

“But it’s not Caroline!” cried Miss Craigie.

“Hush!” said Mrs. Enderby. “I shall explain to you. Please allow the chauffeur to carry upstairs a small trunk, and please have no air of surprise.”

Evidently Miss Craigie was in the habit of obeying Mrs. Enderby. She opened the front door and called the chauffeur, who came in with the trunk.

“Turn your back!” whispered Mrs. Enderby to Lexy. “Go and look out of the window!”

Lexy heard the man go past the sitting room and up the stairs. Presently he came running down, and the front door closed after him.

“Now, Miss Craigie,” said Mrs. Enderby, “if you will permit Miss Moran to go upstairs?”

“Oh, certainly!” answered the bewildered Miss Craigie. “Whatever you think best, Mrs. Enderby, I’m sure.”

“Go!” said Mrs. Enderby.

The lady’s tone aroused in Lexy a great desire not to go. Of course, now that she had gone so far, it would be childish to refuse to continue; but she meant to take her time. She stood there by the window, slowly drawing off her gloves, her back turned to the room. Suddenly Mrs. Enderby caught her by the shoulder and turned her around.

“Go!” she said again. “Take off those things of my child’s. Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Have you no heart?”

There was such a note of anguish in her voice that Lexy no longer delayed. She followed Miss Craigie up the stairs to a neat, prim little bedroom, where the trunk stood, already unlocked.

“If you want anything—” suggested Miss Craigie, in her gentle and apologetic way.

“No, thank you,” replied Lexy.

Miss Craigie went out, closing the door softly behind her. Lexy took off Caroline’s hat and coat and laid them on the bed.

“I wonder if I’ll ever see her wearing them again!” she thought.

For a long time she stood motionless, looking down at the things that Caroline had worn. Most pitifully eloquent, they seemed to her—the hat that had covered Caroline’s fair hair, the coat that had fitted her slender shoulders. Lexy looked and looked, grave and sorrowful—and in that moment her resolution was made.

“I’m going to find her!” she said, half aloud. “I don’t care what any one else does or what any one else thinks. I know she’s in trouble of some sort, and I’m going to find her!”

The last trace of what Lexy had called “mawkish self-pity” had vanished now. She was no longer concerned with Mrs. Enderby’s attitude toward herself. It didn’t matter. Finding another job didn’t matter, either. She had a little money due her, and she meant to use it—every penny of it—in finding Caroline.

She washed her hands and face, brushed her hair, put on her own hat and jacket, and went downstairs again. Mrs. Enderby was standing in the tiny hall, and from the sitting room there came a sound of muffled sobbing.

“She is an imbecile, that woman!” said Mrs. Enderby, with a sigh; “but she will hold her tongue. And you?”

“I’ve got to do as I think best,” answered Lexy. “I’ll say good-by now, Mrs. Enderby.”

“There is no train until three o’clock. It is now after one. We shall have lunch directly.”

“No, thank you,” said Lexy. “I’d rather go now. I dare say I can find something to eat in the village.”

She was not in the least angry now, or hurt; only she wanted to get away, by herself, to think this out.

“Good-by?” repeated Mrs. Enderby, with a smile. “You think, then, never to see me again?”

“No,” said Lexy. “I mean to see you again—when I have something to tell you; but just now I want to go back and pack up my things.”

“And leave my house?”

“Yes.”

They were both silent for a moment. Then, to Lexy’s amazement, Mrs. Enderby laid a hand gently on the girl’s shoulder.

“My child,” she said, “you think I am a very hard woman. Perhaps it is so; but, like you, I do what seems to me the right. Certainly it is better now that you should leave us; but not like this. You must have your lunch here, then you must return to the house and sleep there, all in the usual way. To-morrow you shall go.” She paused a moment. “You shall go, if you are still determined that you will not keep faith with me.”

It was not a very difficult matter to touch Lexy’s heart. Whatever resentment she may have felt against Mrs. Enderby vanished now, lost in a sincere pity and respect; but she was firm in her purpose.

“I’ve got to tell one person,” she said. “If I do, I shall be able to tell you something you ought to know. I wish you could trust me! I wish you could believe that all I’m thinking of is—Caroline!”

“I do believe you,” said Mrs. Enderby. “You are very honest, and very, very young. You wish to do good, but you do harm. Very well, my child—I cannot stop you. Go your way, and I go mine; but”—she paused again, and again smiled her faint, shadowy smile—“if I think it right that you should be sacrificed, it shall be so. I am sorry. I have affection for you. I shall be sorry if you stand in my way.”

Lexy met her eyes steadily.

“I’m sorry, too,” she said.

And so she was. There was nothing in her heart now but sorrow for them all—for Caroline, for Mrs. Enderby, for the luckless Mr. Houseman, even for Miss Craigie; but most of all for Caroline.

“I’ve got to find her,” she thought, over and over again; “and he’ll help me!”

She had lunch in Miss Craigie’s cottage—a melancholy meal, with the hostess red-eyed and dejected and Mrs. Enderby sternly silent. Then, after lunch, poor Miss Craigie was sent out for a drive, in order to get rid of the chauffeur while Lexy slipped out of the house and down to the station.

Everything went as Mrs. Enderby had willed it. Lexy caught the designated train, and returned to the city. All the way in, her great comfort was the thought of Mr. Houseman. He would help her. Now she could tell him that Caroline had gone, and he would help her.

“Of course, I’ve missed him to-day,” she thought; “but he’s sure to be in the park again to-morrow. Perhaps he’ll telephone. He’s not the sort to be easily discouraged, I’m sure.”

It was dark when she reached the Grand Central, but, at the risk of being late for dinner, Lexy chose to walk back to the house. She could always think better when she was walking.

“I want to get the thing in order in my own mind,” she reflected. “Mrs. Enderby is so—confusing. Here’s the case—Mr. Houseman says Caroline promised to meet him last night at a place called Wyngate, and they were to be married. She left the house. This morning there was a letter from her, postmarked Wyngate; but he says she didn’t go there. Well, then, where did she go?”

Impossible to answer that question with even the wildest surmise.

“I’ll have to wait,” Lexy went on. “I’ll have to find out more from Mr. Houseman. Perhaps they misunderstood each other. It’s no use trying to guess. I’ll have to wait till I see him.”

She recalled his honest, sunburned face with great good will. He was her ally. He was young, like herself, not old and cautious and deliberate. She liked him. She trusted him. In her loneliness and anxiety, he seemed a friend.

Annie opened the door with her customary air of disapproval.

“Yes, miss,” she answered. “Mrs. Enderby came home in the car half an hour ago. Dinner ’ll be served in ten minutes. Here’s a letter for you. A young man left it about twenty minutes ago.”

“If I’d taken a taxi from Grand Central, I’d have seen him!” was Lexy’s first thought.

Even a letter was something, however, and she ran upstairs with it, very much pleased. Of course, it was from Mr. Houseman. She locked the door, and, standing against it, looked at the envelope. It was addressed to “Miss Lexy” in a good clear hand. That made her smile, remembering her first indignation that morning.

The letter ran thus:

Dear Miss Lexy:

Please excuse me for addressing you like this, but I don’t know your other name. I forgot to ask you.

I waited in the park for you all afternoon. When it got dark, I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I went to the house and asked for Miss Enderby. The servant told me she had gone away to the country with her mother this morning.

Please tell Miss Enderby that I understand. I am sorry she didn’t tell me before that she had changed her mind, instead of letting me wait like that; but it’s finished now. Please tell her she can count on me to hold my tongue, and never to bother her again in any way.

We are sailing to-night, or I should have tried to see you to-morrow. In case you have any message for me, you can address me at the company’s office, J. J. Eames & Son, 99 State Street. I expect to be back in about six weeks.

Very truly yours, Charles Houseman.

“Sailing to-night!” cried Lexy. “Then he’s gone! He’s gone!”

VII

“So you are still of the same mind?” inquired Mrs. Enderby.

“More so, if anything,” Lexy answered seriously.

It was after breakfast the next morning. Mr. Enderby had gone to his office, and Mrs. Enderby and Lexy were alone in the dining room. There was an odd sort of friendliness between them. Lexy felt no constraint in asking questions.

“There isn’t any letter this morning, is there, Mrs. Enderby?”

“There is not.”

“Then I suppose you’re going to tell Mr. Enderby?”

“This evening.”

“And then?”

“Then I shall be guided by his advice,” Mrs. Enderby replied blandly.

Lexy could have smiled at this. She knew how likely Mrs. Enderby was to be guided by her husband; but she kept the smile and the thought to herself.

“I don’t want to interfere with your plans—” she began.

“I have no plans.”

“I mean, if you’re going to take steps to find her—”

“My child,” said Mrs. Enderby, “it is clear that you wish to amuse yourself with a grand mystery. I tell you there is no mystery, but you do not believe me. I ask you to say nothing of this matter, but you refuse. So I say to you now—go your own way, proceed with your mystery. I do not think you can hurt me very much.”

Lexy flushed.

“I don’t want to hurt any one,” she declared stiffly. “I just want to help your daughter.”

“Proceed, then!” said Mrs. Enderby.

Lexy rose.

“Then I’ll say good-by, Mrs. Enderby,” she said. “My trunk’s packed. I’ll send for it this afternoon.”

“And where are you going in such a hurry?”

“I’m going to Wyngate,” said Lexy.

“Ah!” said Mrs. Enderby. “It is a pretty place, is it not?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.”

“Pardon me—you saw it yesterday. It is a small village through which we passed on the way to Miss Craigie’s house.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Now that you do know, perhaps you will spare yourself the trouble of going there,” said Mrs. Enderby. “I assure you you will not find Caroline there. I myself made certain inquiries. No such person has arrived in Wyngate.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“But I observe by your face that you are not convinced,” Mrs. Enderby went on. “‘This Mrs. Enderby, she is a stupid old creature,’ you think to yourself. ‘I shall go there myself, and I shall discover that which she could not.’”

Lexy reddened again.

“I don’t mean it that way,” she said. “It’s only that we look at this from different points of view, and I feel—I feel that I’ve got to go.”

“Very well!” said Mrs. Enderby, and she, too, rose. “You will please to come to my room with me. There is part of your salary to be paid to you.”

Lexy followed her, still flushed, and very reluctant. She wished she could afford to refuse that money.

“But I’ve earned it,” she thought; “and goodness knows I’ll need it!”

Mrs. Enderby sat down at her desk and took out her check book. While she wrote, Lexy looked out of the window.

“The amount due to you, including to-day, is thirty-two dollars,” said Mrs. Enderby. “Here is a check for it.”

“Thank you,” said Lexy.

“One minute more! Here, my child, is another check.”

Lexy stared at it, amazed. It was for one hundred dollars.

“But, Mrs. Enderby, I can’t—”

“You will please take it and say nothing more. I give you this because I shall give you no reference. I shall answer no inquiries about you. You understand?”

“But I don’t want—”

Mrs. Enderby pushed back her chair, and rose. She crossed the room to Lexy, put both hands on the girl’s shoulders, and then did something far more astonishing than the gift of the check. She kissed Lexy on the forehead.

“Good-by, and God bless you, little honest one!” she said, with a smile. “I think we shall not see each other again, but I shall sometimes remember you. Go, now, and bear in mind that you can always trust Miss Craigie. She is an imbecile, but she can be trusted. Adieu!”

Lexy’s eyes filled with tears.

“Au revoir!” she said stoutly; and then, with one of her sudden impulses, she put both arms around Mrs. Enderby’s neck and returned her kiss vigorously. “I’m sorry!” she said. “I’m awfully sorry!”

This was their parting. Lexy was thankful that it had been like this, very glad that she could leave the house in good will and kindliness. It strengthened her beyond measure. She wanted to help Caroline, and she wanted to help Mrs. Enderby, too.

“And I will!” she thought. “I know that I’m right and she’s wrong! She’s rather terrible, too. Sometimes I think she’d almost rather not find out the truth, if it was going to make what she calls a scandal. She will have it that Caroline’s gone away of her own free will, to get married; and if it’s anything else, she doesn’t want to know. She is hard, but there’s something rather fine about her.”

There was no one in the hall when Lexy left, and this was a relief, for she supposed that Mrs. Enderby had told the servants, or would tell them, that Miss Moran had been discharged.

She went out and closed the door behind her. A fine, thin rain was falling—nothing to daunt a healthy young creature like Lexy; yet she wished that the sun had been shining. She wished that she hadn’t had to leave the house in the rain, under a gray sky. Somehow it made her only too well aware that she was homeless now, and alone.

As was her habit when depressed, she set off to walk briskly; and by the time she reached the Grand Central her cheeks were glowing and her heart considerably less heavy. She learned that she had nearly three hours to wait for the next train to Wyngate; so she bought her ticket, checked her bag, and went out again.

In a near-by department store she bought a little chamois pocket. Then she went to the bank, cashed both her checks, and, putting the bills into her pocket, hung it around her neck inside her blouse. It was very comfortable to have so much money.

Then, only as a forlorn hope, she rang up the offices of J. J. Eames & Son, on State Street.

“I don’t suppose they keep track of their passengers,” she thought; “but it can’t do any harm.”

So, when she got the connection, she asked politely:

“Could you possibly tell me where Mr. Charles Houseman has gone?”

“Certainly!” answered an equally polite voice at the other end of the wire. “Just a moment, please! You mean Mr. Houseman, second officer on the Mazell?”

“I don’t know,” said Lexy, surprised. “Has he blue eyes?”

There was an instant’s silence. Then the voice spoke again, a little unsteadily.

“I—I believe so.”

“He’s laughing at me!” thought Lexy indignantly, and her voice became severely dignified.

“Can you tell me where the—the Mazell has gone?”

“Lisbon and Gibraltar. We expect her back in about five weeks.”

“Thank you!” said Lexy. “And that’s that!” she added, to herself. “So he’s a sailor! I rather like sailors. Well, anyhow, he’s gone.” She sighed. “Carry on!” she said.

She went into a tea room on Forty-Second Street and ordered herself a very good lunch.

“Much better than I can afford,” she thought. “Goodness knows what’s going to happen to me! Here I am, without visible means of support. I suppose I’m an idiot. Lots of people would say so. They’d say I ought to be looking for a new job this instant; but I don’t care! I’m not going back on Caroline. Mrs. Enderby won’t do anything, and Mr. Houseman’s gone away, and there’s nobody but me. Perhaps I can’t do very much, but, by jiminy, I’m going to try!”

There was still an hour to spare, and she passed it in a fashion she had often scornfully denounced. She went shopping—without buying. She wandered through a great department store, looking at all sorts of things. Some of them she wanted, but she resolutely told herself that she was better off without them.

Then, at the proper time, she went back to the Grand Central, recovered her bag, bought herself two or three magazines and a bar of chocolate, and boarded the train. For all that she tried to be so cool and sensible, she could not help feeling a queer little thrill of excitement. Her quest had begun, and she could not in any way foresee the end.

VIII

Now it certainly was not Lexy’s way to take any great interest in strange young men. There was not a trace of coquetry in her honest heart, and she had always looked upon the little flirtations of her friends with distaste and wonder.

“I’m not romantic!” she had said more than once.

She believed that. She would have denied indignantly that her present mission was romantic. She thought it a matter-of-course thing which she was in honor bound to do for her friend Caroline Enderby. She felt that she was very cool and practical about it, and a mighty sensible sort of girl altogether.

Certainly she saw the young man on the train, for her alert glance saw pretty well everything. She saw him, and she thought she had never set eyes on a handsomer man.

He was very tall, and slenderly and strongly built. He was dressed with fastidious perfection, and he had an air of marked distinction. In short, he was a man whom any one would look at—and remember; but Lexy, the unromantic girl, thought him inferior to the blue-eyed Mr. Houseman. She preferred young Houseman’s blunt, sunburned face to the dark and haughty one of this stranger. She simply was not interested in dark and haughty strangers, however distinguished and handsome. She looked at this one, and then returned to her magazines.

She had a weakness for detective stories, and she was reading one now—reading it in the proper spirit, uncritical and absorbed. Whenever the train stopped at a station, she glanced up, and more than once, as she turned her head, she caught the stranger’s eye. She wondered, later on, why she hadn’t had some sort of premonition. People in stories always did. They always recognized at once the other people who were going to be in the story with them; but Lexy did not. Even toward the end of the journey, when she and the stranger were the only ones left in the car, she was not aware of any interest in him.

Even when he, too, got out at Wyngate, Lexy was not specially interested. It was only a little after five o’clock, but it was dark already on that rainy afternoon, and the only thing that interested her just then was the sight of a solitary taxi drawn up beside the platform. Bag in hand, she hurried toward it, but the stranger got there before her. When she arrived, he was speaking to the driver.

There was no other taxi or vehicle of any sort in sight, no other lights were visible except those of the station. It was a strange and unknown world upon which she looked in the rainy dusk, and she felt a justifiable annoyance with the ungallant stranger. He jumped into the cab and slammed the door.

“Driver!” cried Lexy. “Will you please come back for me?”

But before the driver could answer, the door of the cab opened, and the stranger sprang out.

“I beg your pardon!” he said, standing hat in hand before Lexy. “I’m most awfully sorry! Give you my word I didn’t notice. I should have noticed, of course. Absent-minded sort of beggar, you know! Please take the cab, won’t you? I don’t in the least mind waiting. Please take it! Allow me!”

He tried to take her bag. His manner was not at all haughty. On the contrary, it was a very agreeable manner, and the impulsive Lexy liked him.

“Why can’t we both go?” said she.

“Oh, no!” he protested. “Please take the cab! Give you my word I don’t mind waiting.”

“It’s a dismal place to wait in,” said Lexy. “We can both go, just as well as not.”

The driver approved of Lexy’s idea. It saved him trouble.

“Where do you want to go, miss?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Lexy. “I suppose there’s a hotel, isn’t there?”

“I say!” exclaimed the stranger. “Just what I’d been asking him, you know! He says there’s no hotel, but a very decent boarding house.”

“Mis’ Royce’s,” added the driver. “She takes boarders.”

“All right!” said Lexy cheerfully. “Miss Royce’s it is!”

The stranger took her bag, and put it into the taxi. He would have assisted Lexy, but she was already inside; so he, too, got in. He closed the door, and off they went.

“I am sorry, you know,” he said, “shoving ahead like that; but I didn’t notice—”

“Well, please stop being sorry now,” requested Lexy firmly.

“Right-o!” said he. “You won’t mind my saying you’ve been wonderfully nice about it?”

“No, I don’t mind that a bit,” replied Lexy. “I like to be wonderfully nice.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Will you allow me to introduce myself?” said the stranger. “Grey, you know—George Grey—Captain Grey, you know.”

“Captain of a ship?” asked Lexy, with interest. She thought she would like to talk about ships.

“Oh, no!” said he, rather shocked. “Army—British army—stationed in India.”

“I knew you were an Englishman.”

“Did you really?” said he, as if surprised. “People do seem to know. My first visit to your country—six months’ leave—so I’ve come here to see my sister—Mrs. Quelton. She’s married to an American doctor.”

Lexy thought there was something almost pathetic in his chivalrous anxiety to explain himself.

“I’m Alexandra Moran,” she said.

“Thank you!” said Captain Grey. “Thank you very much, Miss Moran!”

There was no opportunity for further polite conversation, for the taxi had stopped and the driver came around to the door.

“Better make a run fer it!” he said. “I’ll take yer bags.”

So Captain Grey took Lexy’s arm, and they did make a run for it, through the fine, chilly rain, along a garden path and up on a veranda. The door was opened at once.

“Miss Royce?” asked Captain Grey.

“Mrs. Royce,” said the other. “Come right in. My, how it does rain!”

They followed her into a dimly lit hall. She opened a door on the right, and lit the gas in what was obviously the “best parlor”—a dreadful room, stiff and ugly, and smelling of camphor and dampness. Captain Grey remained in the hall to settle with the driver, and Lexy decided to let her share of the reckoning wait for a more auspicious occasion. She went into the parlor with Mrs. Royce.

“You and your husband just come from the city?” inquired the landlady.

“He’s not my husband,” replied Lexy, with a laugh. “I never set eyes on him before. There was only one taxi, and we were both looking for a hotel. The driver said you took boarders, and that’s how we happened to come together.”

“I don’t take boarders much, ’cept in the summer time,” said Mrs. Royce. She was a stout, comfortable sort of creature, gray-haired, and very neat in her dark dress and clean white apron. She had a kindly, good-humored face, too, but she had a landlady’s eye. “People don’t come here much, this time of year,” she went on. “Nothing to bring ’em here.”

These last words were a challenge to Lexy to explain her business, and she was prepared.

“I passed through here the other day in a motor,” she said, “on my way to Adams Corners, and I thought it looked like such a nice, quiet place for me to work in. I’m a writer, you know, and I thought Wyngate would just suit me.”

“I was born and raised out to Adams Corners,” said Mrs. Royce. “Guess there’s no one living out there that I don’t know.”

“Then perhaps you know Miss Craigie?”

“Miss Margaret Craigie? I should say I did! If you’re a friend of hers—”

“Only an acquaintance,” said Lexy cautiously.

“Set down!” suggested Mrs. Royce, very cordial now. “I’ll light a nice wood fire. A writer, are you? Well, well! And the gentleman—I wonder, now, what brings him here!”

“He told me he’d come to see his sister,” said Lexy. “Mrs. Quelton, I think he said.”

“Quelton!” cried the landlady. “You didn’t say Quelton? Not the doctor’s wife?”

“Yes,” said the captain’s voice from the doorway. “Nothing happened to her, has there? Nothing gone wrong?”

Mrs. Royce stared at him with the most profound interest, and he stared back at her, somewhat uneasily.

“No,” said she, at last. “No—only—well, I’m sure!”

There was a silence.

“Could we possibly have a little supper?” asked Lexy politely.

“Yes, indeed you can!” said Mrs. Royce. “Right away!” But still she lingered. “Mrs. Quelton’s brother!” she said. “Well, I never!”

Then she tore herself away, leaving Lexy and Captain Grey alone in the parlor.

“Seems to bother her,” he said. “I wonder why!”

Lexy was also wondering, and longing to ask questions, but she felt that it wouldn’t be good manners.

“People in small places like this are always awfully curious,” she observed.

“Yes,” said he; “and Muriel may be a bit eccentric, you know. I rather imagine she is, from her letters. I’ve never seen her.”

“Never seen your own sister!”

Lexy would certainly have asked questions now, manners or no manners, only that Mrs. Royce entered the room again, to fulfill her promise to make a “nice wood fire.” Amazing, the difference it made in the room! The ugliness and stiffness vanished in the ruddy glow. It seemed a delightful room, now, homely and welcoming and safe.

“It’s real cozy here,” said Mrs. Royce, “on a night like this. I’m sorry the dining room’s so kind of chilly.”

“Oh, can’t we have supper here, by the fire?” cried Lexy. “Please! We’ll promise not to get any crumbs on your nice carpet, Mrs. Royce!”

“I guess you can,” replied the landlady benevolently.

And so it happened that the ancient magic of fire was invoked in Lexy’s behalf. Probably, if she and Captain Grey had had their supper in the chilly dining room, they would have been a little chilly, too, and more cautious. They might not have said all that they did say.

IX

It was an excellent supper, and Captain Grey and Lexy thoroughly appreciated it. They ate with healthy appetites, and they talked. Mrs. Royce, from the kitchen, heard their cheerful, friendly voices, and their laughter, and she didn’t for one moment believe that they had never met before. Listening to them, she wore that benevolent smile once more, and felt sure that she had encountered a very charming little romance.

It was all Lexy’s doing. It was Lexy’s beautiful talent, to be able to create this atmosphere of honest and happy camaraderie. Before the meal was finished, Captain Grey was talking to her as if they had known each other since childhood, and he didn’t even wonder at it. It seemed perfectly natural.

Mrs. Royce came in to take away the dishes.

“Going to set here a while?” she asked, looking at the two young people with a smile of approval. “I’ll bring in some more wood.” She hesitated a moment, and the landladyish glimmer again appeared in her eyes. “If it was me,” she observed, in the most casual way, “the fire’d be enough light. If it was me, now, I wouldn’t want that gas flaring and blaring away—and burning up good money,” she added, to herself.

“You’re right,” Lexy cheerfully agreed. “We’ll turn it down.”

The rain was falling fast outside, driving against the windows when the wind blew; and inside the young people sat by the fire, very content.

“Queer thing!” said Captain Grey meditatively. “Never been in this place before—never been in this country before—and yet it’s like coming home!”

“I know that feeling,” said Lexy. “I’ve had it before. I think only people who haven’t any real homes of their own ever have it.”

“But haven’t you any real home?” he asked, evidently distressed.

“No,” she answered; “but please don’t think it’s tragic. It’s not.”

“You haven’t impressed me as tragic,” he admitted.

Lexy laughed.

“Thank goodness!” she said. “I do want to keep on being—well, ordinary and human, even when outside things seem a little tragic.”

“Miss Moran!” he said, and stopped.

It was some time before he spoke again. Lexy took advantage of his abstraction to study his face by the firelight. When you come to understand it a little, it wasn’t a haughty face at all, but a very sensitive and fine one.

“Miss Moran!” he said again. “About being ordinary and human—of course, one wants to be that; but the thing is—I don’t know quite how to put it, but if you have a feeling, you know—I mean a feeling that something is wrong—” He paused again. “I mean,” he went on, “if you have a feeling like that—a sort of—well, call it uneasiness—the question is whether one ought to laugh at it, or take it as”—once more he stopped—“as a warning,” he ended.

A strange sensation came over Lexy.

“I’ve been thinking a good deal about that very thing lately,” she replied. “I believe feelings like that are a warning. I’m sure it’s wrong—foolish and wrong—to disregard them. Even if every one else, even if your own mind tells you it’s all nonsense, you mustn’t care!”

“I think you’re right,” he gravely agreed. “I’ve been trying to tell myself that I’m an utter ass, but all the time I knew I wasn’t. I knew—I know now—that there’s something—”

An unreasoning dread possessed Lexy. She felt for a moment that she didn’t want to hear any more.

“I’d like to tell you about it, if you wouldn’t mind,” he said. “Somehow I think you could help.”

For an instant she hesitated.

“Please do tell me,” she said at length. “I’d be glad to help, if I can.”

“It’s this,” he said. “Do you mind if I smoke? Thanks!”

He took a cigarette case from his pocket. As he struck a match, she could see his face very clearly in the sudden flame; and, for no reason at all, she pitied him.

“It’s this,” he said again. “It’s about my sister.”

“The sister you’ve never seen?”

The sensation of dread had gone, and she felt only the liveliest interest. She wanted very much to hear about Captain Grey’s sister.

“It wasn’t quite true to say I’d never seen her,” he explained, in his painstaking way. “I have, you know; but not since I was six years old and she was a baby. Our mother died when Muriel was born, out in India. An aunt took the poor little kid to the States with her, and I stayed out there with my father.”

He drew on his cigarette for a minute.

“She’s twenty-one now,” he said. “Last picture I had of her was when she was fourteen or so. A pretty kid—a bit more than pretty—what you’d call lovely.”

He was silent for a little, staring into the fire.

“When I was at school in England, it was arranged that she was to come over; but she didn’t, and we’ve never met again. Twenty-one years—it’s a long time.”

“Yes, it is,” said Lexy gently, for something in his voice touched her.

“We’ve written to each other, on and off. I’m not much good at that sort of thing, but I thought her letters were—well, rather remarkable, you know; but I dare say I’m prejudiced. She’s the only one of my own people left.”

“You poor, dear thing!” thought Lexy, with ready sympathy, but she did not say anything.

“Anyhow,” he presently continued, “I got an impression from her letters that she was rather an extraordinary girl. She was studying music—said she was going on the concert stage—awfully enthusiastic about it; and then she married this doctor chap. She never said much about him, only that she was very happy; but—well, I don’t believe that.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Anyhow, she was married about two years ago, and a few months after her marriage she began writing oftener—almost every mail. She was always wanting me to come over here and see her; and lately, in her last letters, I—somehow I fancied she wanted me rather badly. It—it worried me, so I arranged for leave. On the very day when I wrote that I would be coming over this month, I had a letter from her, asking me not to make any plans for coming this year. She said she’d taken up her concert work again, and would be too busy to enjoy the visit, and so on. I’d already made my plans, you see, so I went ahead. Then, about a fortnight later, after she’d got my letter, I suppose, I had a cable. ‘Don’t come,’ it said. I cabled back, but she didn’t answer.”

He looked anxiously at Lexy, but she said nothing. She sat very still, curled up in a big chair, staring into the fire with an odd look of uncertainty on her face.

“You know,” he went on, “I’ve tried to think that she was simply too busy, or something of that sort. But, Miss Moran, didn’t this woman’s manner rather make you think there was something a bit—out of the way?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Lexy, in a casual tone which very much disconcerted him.

“I’ve been making a fool of myself!” he thought, flushing. “Why the devil didn’t I keep my old-woman notions to myself? Now she’ll think—”

But Lexy was not thinking that Captain Grey was a fool. She was only very much afraid of being one herself, and was engaged in a severe struggle against this danger. That dread, that vague and oppressive dread, had come back, and she was fighting to throw it off. She wanted to be, she would be, her own normal, cheerful self again, living in a normal, everyday world.

“All this about his sister, and about Caroline!” she thought. “It’s really nothing—nothing serious. Our both being here in Wyngate—that’s nothing, either. It’s just a coincidence. If the gas wasn’t turned down, I wouldn’t feel like this.”

She would have risen and turned up the gas, only that she was ashamed to do so. The fire was blazing merrily, shedding a ruddy light upon the homely room, the most commonplace room in the world. There was Captain Grey sitting there smoking—just an ordinary young man come to visit his sister. There was herself—just Lexy Moran, well fed and warm and comfortable, with more than a hundred dollars in a bag round her neck. She could hear Mrs. Royce moving about in the kitchen, humming to herself in a low drone.

“I will not be silly!” she told herself.

And just then a train whistled—a long, melancholy shriek. Lexy had a sudden vision of it, rushing through the dark and the rain. She had a sudden realization of the outside world, vast, lonely, terrible, stretching from pole to pole—forests, and plains, and oceans. The monstrous folly of pretending that everything was snug and warm and cozy! Things did happen—only cowards denied that.

“Captain Grey!” she cried abruptly. “What you’ve told me—it is queer; and it’s even queerer when I think what has brought me here to this little place. Both of us here, in Wyngate! I think I’ll tell you.”

And she did.

He listened in absolute silence to the tale of Caroline Enderby’s disappearance. Even after Lexy had finished, it was some time before he spoke.

“I’ll try to help you,” he said simply.

“Oh, thank you!” cried Lexy, with a rush of gratitude. She wanted some one to help her, and she could imagine no one better for the purpose than this young man. He would help her—she was sure of it. Even the fact of having told him most wonderfully lightened her burden. She gave an irrepressible little giggle.

“We have almost all the ingredients for a first-class mystery story,” she said; “except the jewel—the famous ruby, or the great diamond.”

“It’s an emerald, in this case,” said Captain Grey.

Lexy straightened up in her chair, and stared at him.

“You don’t really mean that?” she demanded. “There isn’t really an emerald?”

He smiled.

“I’m afraid it hasn’t much to do with the case—with either of the cases,” he said; “but there is an emerald—my sister’s.”

“It didn’t come from India?”

“It did, though!”

“Don’t tell me it was stolen from a temple! That would be too good to be true!”

“I’m sorry,” he said; “but as far as I know, it’s never been stolen at all, and its history for the last eighty years hasn’t been sinister. One of the old rajahs gave it to my grandfather—a reward of merit, you know. When my father married, it went to my mother. She never had any trouble with it. She never wore it, because she didn’t like it.”

“Why?”

“Well, you see, it’s an ostentatious sort of thing, and she wasn’t ostentatious.” He paused a moment. “My father told me, before he died, that he wanted Muriel to have it when she was eighteen; and so, three years ago, I sent it over to her.”

“But how?”

“You’re a good detective,” said he, smiling again. “You don’t miss any of the points. It was a bit of a problem, how to send the thing; but I had the luck to find some people I knew who were coming over here, and they brought it. So that’s that!”

“An emerald!” said Lexy. “This is almost too much! I think I’ll say good night, Captain Grey. I need sleep.”

As she followed Mrs. Royce up the stairs, she saw Captain Grey still sitting before the fire, smoking; and it was a comforting sight.

X

Lexy slept late the next morning. It was nearly nine o’clock when she opened her eyes. She lay for a few minutes, looking about her. The gray light of another rainy day filled the neat, unfamiliar little room, and outside the window she could see the branches of a little pear tree rocking in the wind.

“I’m here in Wyngate,” she said to herself. “I was bent on coming here to find Caroline; and now, here I am, and how am I going to begin?”

She got up, and washed in cold water, in a queer, old-fashioned china basin painted with flowers. She brushed her shining hair, and dressed, feeling more hopeful every minute.

“One step at a time!” she thought. “The first step was to come here; and the next step—well, I’ll think of it after breakfast. Perhaps Captain Grey will have thought of something.”

But Captain Grey had gone out.

“Jest a few minutes ago,” Mrs. Royce informed her. “He was down real early—around seven, and he waited and waited for you. At half past eight he et, and off he went.”

“Did he say when he’d be back?”

“No,” said Mrs. Royce. “He didn’t say much of anything. He’s a kind of quiet young man, ain’t he? Well, he’d ought to get on with his sister, then.”

“Is she very quiet?” asked Lexy.

“Quiet!” repeated Mrs. Royce. “Set down an’ begin to eat, Miss Moran. I’ve fixed a real nice tasty breakfast for you, if I do say it as shouldn’t. Corn gems, too. Mis’ Quelton quiet? I should say she was! Quiet as”—she paused—“as the dead,” she went on, and the phrase made an unpleasant impression upon Lexy. “An’ her husband, too. I never saw the like of them. They never come into the village, an’ nobody ever goes out there to the Tower. About twice a week the doctor drives into Lymeswell—the town below here—and he buys a lot of food an’ all, an’ he goes home. I can see him out of my front winder, an’ the sight of him, driving along in that black buggy of his—it gives me the shivers!”

“But if he’s a doctor—”

“Don’t ask me what kind of doctor he is, Miss Moran! He don’t go to see the sick—that’s all I know.”

“But his wife—what is she like?”

“Miss Moran,” said the landlady, with profound impressiveness, “I guess there ain’t three people in Wyngate that’s ever set eyes on her!”

“But how awfully queer!”

“You may well say ‘queer,’” said Mrs. Royce. “There she stays, out in that lonely place—never seeing a soul from one month’s end to another. She’s a young woman, too—young, an’ just as pretty as a picture.”

“Then you are—”

“I’m one of the few that has seen her,” said Mrs. Royce, with a sort of grim satisfaction. “That’s why I take a kind of special interest in her. I seen her the night the doctor brought her here to Wyngate a young bride. That’ll be three years ago this winter, but I remember it as plain as plain. There was a terrible snowstorm, and he couldn’t git out to his place, so he had to bring her here, and she sat right in this very room, just where you’re sitting.”

Instinctively Lexy looked behind her.

“I feel that same way myself—as if she was a ghost,” said Mrs. Royce solemnly. “Near three years ago, and her living only three miles off, an’ I’ve never set eyes on her again. I’ve never forgotten her, though, the sweet pretty young creature!”

“But why do you suppose she lives like that?”

Mrs. Royce came nearer.

“Miss Moran,” she said, “that doctor is crazy. I’m not the only one to say it. He’s as crazy—hush, now! Here’s that poor young man!”

The “poor young man” came into the room, with that very nice smile of his.

“Good morning!” he said. “I say, I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you a bit longer, Miss Moran.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” said Lexy. “I’d have felt awfully guilty.”

“I went out to telephone,” he explained. “Thought I’d tell Muriel I was here, you know; but they have no telephone. Dashed odd, isn’t it, for a doctor not to have a telephone in the house?”

“I don’t think he’s a real doctor—a physician, I mean,” said Lexy. She glanced around and saw that Mrs. Royce had gone. Springing up, she crossed the room to Captain Grey. “Has Mrs. Royce—has any one said anything to you?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

“No!” answered the young man, startled. “Why? What’s up?”

“Mrs. Royce says—I suppose I really ought to tell you.”

“No doubt about it!”

“Mrs. Royce says Dr. Quelton is crazy!”

Captain Grey took the news very coolly. Lexy observed that he suppressed a smile.

“Oh, that!” he said. “But you know, Miss Moran, in these little villages any one who’s at all out of the ordinary is called crazy. I’ve noticed it before. I can soon find out for myself, though, can’t I? I thought, if you didn’t want me this morning, I’d go over there—pay a call, you know. I understand it’s three miles from here, so I shouldn’t be very long. I’d come back here for lunch.”

“But, Captain Grey, you mustn’t think I expect you to—”

“It’s not that,” he said. “Only you said you’d let me help you in your little job, and I want to!” He smiled down at her. “So,” he said, “I’ll be back for lunch;” and off he went.

Lexy went to the window and looked out. She saw Captain Grey striding off up the muddy road, perfectly indifferent to the rain, and curiously elegant, in spite of his wet weather clothes. She was thinking of him with great friendliness and appreciation; but she was not thinking of him in the least as Mrs. Royce imagined she was thinking.

Mrs. Royce stood in the doorway, watching Lexy watch Captain Grey, smiling and even beaming with benevolence; but she would have been disappointed if she had suspected what was in Lexy’s head.

“He’s awfully nice,” thought Lexy, “and awfully handsome, and I’m certain that he’s absolutely trustworthy and honorable, but—”

But somehow he wasn’t to be compared to Mr. Houseman. She knew practically nothing about Mr. Houseman. She had talked with him for five or ten minutes in the park, and his conversation had been entirely about Caroline Enderby. He had shown himself to be quick-tempered and sadly lacking in patience. He had written Lexy a stiff, offended, boyish letter, and then he had disappeared. There was no sensible reason in the world why she should think of him as she did, no reason why she should hope so much to see him again; but she did.

“Well, now!” said Mrs. Royce, at last. “You’ll be wanting a nice quiet place for your writing.”

“Writing!” said Lexy. “I never—” She stopped herself just in time, remembering her shocking falsehood of the night before. “I never care much where I write,” she ended.

“Well, I’ve fixed up the sewing room for you,” said Mrs. Royce. “I’ve put a nice strong table in there with drawers, where you can keep your papers an’ all.”