at an ungallant nod from the German, to go to the door.

"It's a huge fat man," whispered Phillida, on her return to the big room
at the back of the house. "Here's his card."

"Thrush!" muttered Baumgartner as though he knew the name, and he glowered
at the two young faces on which it made no impression whatever. It was
plain how he hated leaving them together; but for once it must be done,
and done quickly--with both doors open and the visitor's very movements
audible on the steps. To the door the doctor must go, and went, shutting
that one pointedly behind him.

The young creatures, looking in each other's eyes, listened for raised
voices and the slam of prompt expulsion; but the voices were pitched too
low to reach their ears in words, and were only interrupted by the sound
of footsteps in the hall, and the perfectly passive closing of an outer
and an inner door in quick succession.

"He's taken him into the dining-room," murmured Phillida. "Who can it
be?"

"Hasn't he any friends?"

"None who ever come here; none of that name anywhere, I feel sure." Her
great eyes, without leaving his for an instant, filled with thought as a
blank screen takes a shadow. "I wonder if it's about that!" she
whispered.

"What?"

"What they were calling out with the newspapers while we were at table."

There was a pause. The look in her eyes had changed. It was purely
penetrating now.

"Why should it be?" asked Pocket, his own eyes falling.

"It's no use asking me, Mr. Upton."

"But I don't understand the question."

"Is that true?"

"No," he muttered; "it isn't."

She was leaning over to him; he felt it, without looking up.

"Mr. Upton," she said, speaking quickly in the undertone they were both
instinctively adopting, "you know now what I thought about you at first.
I won't say what made me; but that was what I thought, but could hardly
believe, and never will again. It makes it all the more a mystery, your
being here. I can't ask my uncle--he tells me nothing--but there's
something I can and must ask you."

Pocket hung his head. He knew what was coming. It came.

"My uncle brought you here, Mr. Upton, on the very morning that thing
happened they were calling out about to-day. In the Park. It is to the
Park he goes so often in the early morning with his camera! How can I say
what I want to say? But, if you think, you will see that everything
points to it; especially the way he ran out for that