o back to
Scotland at once."

Sir Anthony succeeded in pacifying her. The letters were evidence that
Edith and himself believed that Althea was in Galloway at the time.
Maria's denial had come upon them like a thunderclap, bewildering,
stunning. If Althea was not in Galloway, where was she?

Maria Beccles did not reply for some time to the question. Then she
took the pins out of her hat and threw it on a chair, thus symbolising
the renunciation of her intention of returning forthwith to Scotland.

"Yes, Maria," said Lady Fenimore, with fear in her dark eyes, "we don't
doubt your word--but, as Anthony has said, if she wasn't with you,
where was she?"

"How do I know?"

Maria Beccles pointed a lean finger--she was a dark and shrivelled,
gipsy-like creature. "You might as well ask the canal in which she
drowned herself."

"But, my God, Anthony!" I cried, when he had got thus far, "What did
you think? What did you say?"

I realised that the old lady had her social disqualifications.
Plain-dealing is undoubtedly a virtue. But there are several virtues
which the better class of angel keeps chained up in a dog-kennel. Of
course she was acute. A mind trained in the acrobatics of Calvinistic
Theology is, within a narrow compass, surprisingly agile. It jumped at
one bound from the missing week in Althea's life into the black water
of the canal. It was incapable, however, of appreciating the awful
horror in the minds of the beholders.

"I don't know what I said," replied Sir Anthony, walking restlessly
about my library. "We were struck all of a heap. As you know, we never
had reason to think that the poor dear child's death was anything but
an accident. We were not narrow-minded old idiots. She was a dear good
girl. In a modern way she claimed her little independence. We let her
have it. We trusted her. We took it for granted--you know it, Duncan,
as well as I do--that, a hot night in June--not able to sleep--she had
stuck on a hat and wandered about the grounds, as she had often done
before, and a spirit of childish adventure had tempted her, that night,
to walk round the back of the town and--and--well, until in the dark,
she stepped off the tow-path by the lock gates, into nothing--and found
the canal. It was an accident," he continued, with a hand on my
shoulder, looking down on me in my chair. "The inquest proved that. I
accepted it, as you know, as a visitation of God. Edith and I sorrowed
for her like cowards. It