, actually
flinched away from him and then sat with a vague staring look of pain
as though she had been shocked clean out of her wits. She recovered
herself in a moment, but she did not speak, neither had Sir Charles
any words. He looked at her dress which was white and had not so much
as a black riband dangling anywhere about it.

But there were other events than death which could make the utterance
of his wish a _gaucherie_. Sir Charles prided himself upon his tact,
particularly with a good-looking woman, and he was therefore much
abashed and confused. The only one who remained undisturbed was Mr.
Mardale. His mind was never for very long off his wheels, or his
works of art. It was the turn of his pictures now. He had picked up a
genuine Rubens in Ghent, he declared. It was standing somewhere in the
great drawing-room on the carpet against the back of a chair, and Sir
Charles must look at it in the morning, if only it could be found. He
had clean forgotten all about his daughter it appeared. She, however,
had a mind to clear the mystery up, and interrupting her father.

"It is right that you should know," she said simply, "Major Lashley
disappeared six months ago."

"Disappeared!" exclaimed Sir Charles in spite of himself, and the
astonishment in his voice woke the old gentleman from his prattle.

"To be sure," said he apologetically, "I should have told you before
of the sad business. Yes, Sir, Major Lashley disappeared, utterly from
this very house on the eleventh night of last December, and though the
country-side was scoured and every ragamuffin for miles round brought
to question, no trace of him has anywhere been discovered from that
day to this."

An intuition slipped into Sir Charles Fosbrook's mind, and though he
would have dismissed it as entirely unwarrantable, persisted there.
The thought of the steep slope of ground before the house and the mist
in the hollow between the two hills. The mist was undoubtedly the
exhalation from a pond. The pond might have reeds which might catch
and gather a body. But the pond would have been dragged. Still the
thought of the pond remained while he expressed a vague hope that the
Major might by God's will yet be restored to them.

He had barely ended before a louder gust of rain than ordinary smote
upon the windows and immediately there followed a knocking upon the
hall-door. The sound was violent, and it came with so opposite a
rapidity upon the heels of Fosbrook's