all the
values of things.

They were just separating when Tatham, with sudden compunction, asked for
news of Mrs. Melrose, and Felicia.

"I had almost forgotten them!"

"Your mother did not tell me much. They were troubled about Mrs. Melrose,
I think, and Undershaw was coming. The poor little girl turned very
white--no tears--but she was clinging to your mother."

Tatham's face softened, but he said nothing. The road to Threlfall
presented itself, and he turned his horse toward it.

"And Miss Penfold?" said Boden, quietly. "You arrived before the
newspapers? Good. I think, before I return, I shall go and have a talk
with Miss Penfold."

And mounting his bicycle he rode off. Tatham looking after him, felt
uncomfortably certain that Boden knew pretty well all there was to know
about Lydia--Faversham--and himself. But he did not resent it.

Tatham found Threlfall a beleaguered place, police at the gates and in
the house; the chief constable and the Superintendent of police
established in the dining-room, as the only room tolerably free from the
all encumbering collections, and interviewing one person after another.

Tatham asked to see the chief constable. He made his way into the
gallery, which was guarded by police, for although the body of Melrose
had been removed to an upper room, the blood-stain on the Persian carpet,
the overturned chair and picture, the mud-marks on the wall remained
untouched, awaiting the coroner's jury, which was to meet in the house
that evening.

As Tatham approached the room which was now the headquarters of the
police, he met coming out of it a couple of men; one small and sinewy,
with the air of a disreputable athlete, the other a tall pasty-faced man
in a shabby frock coat, with furtive eyes. The first was Nash, Melrose's
legal factotum through many years; the other was one of the clerks in the
Pengarth office, who was popularly supposed to have made much money out
of the Threlfall estate, through a long series of small peculations never
discovered by his miserly master. They passed Tatham with downcast eyes
and an air of suppressed excitement which did not escape him. He found
the chief constable pacing up and down, talking in subdued tones, and
with a furrowed brow, to the Superintendent of police.

"Come in, come in," said Marvell heartily, at sight of the young man, who
was the chief landowner of the district, and likely within a couple of
years to be its lord lieutenant. "W