I handed her the letter. "This next?" I asked, fixing my eyes on her as
she looked.

She read it through. For a minute or two she examined it. "The letter
is right enough," she answered, after a second reading, "though its
guileless simplicity is, perhaps, under the circumstances, just a leetle
overdone; but the handwriting--the handwriting is duplicity itself: a
cunning, serpentine hand, no openness or honesty in it. Depend upon it,
that girl is playing a double game."

"You believe, then, there is character in handwriting?"

"Undoubtedly; when we know the character, we can see it in the writing.
The difficulty is, to see it and read it BEFORE we know it; and I
have practised a little at that. There is character in all we do, of
course--our walk, our cough, the very wave of our hands; the only secret
is, not all of us have always skill to see it. Here, however, I feel
pretty sure. The curls of the g's and the tails of the y's--how full
they are of wile, of low, underhand trickery!"

I looked at them as she pointed. "That is true!" I exclaimed. "I see it
when you show it. Lines meant for effect. No straightness or directness
in them!"

Hilda reflected a moment. "Poor Daphne!" she murmured. "I would do
anything to help her.... I'll tell what might be a good plan." Her
face brightened. "My holiday comes next week. I'll run down to
Scarborough--it's as nice a place for a holiday as any--and I'll observe
this young lady. It can do no harm--and good may come of it."

"How kind of you!" I cried. "But you are always all kindness."

Hilda went to Scarborough, and came back again for a week before going
on to Bruges, where she proposed to spend the greater part of her
holidays. She stopped a night or two in town to report progress, and,
finding another nurse ill, promised to fill her place till a substitute
was forthcoming.

"Well, Dr. Cumberledge," she said, when she saw me alone, "I was right!
I have found out a fact or two about Daphne's rival!"

"You have seen her?" I asked.

"Seen her? I have stopped for a week in the same house. A very nice
lodging-house on the Spa front, too. The girl's well enough off. The
poverty plea fails. She goes about in good rooms and carries a mother
with her."

"That's well," I answered. "That looks all right."

"Oh, yes, she's quite presentable: has the manners of a lady whenever
she chooses. But the chief point is this: she laid her letters every day
on the table in the passag