which in its wearer--under these circumstances--always means
that she is considering whether you will be able to cheat her or
whether she will be able to see you.

"You wish to see Miss Baylis?" said this person, examining Spargo
closely. "Miss Baylis does not often see anybody."

"I hope," said Spargo politely, "that Miss Baylis is not an invalid?"

"No, she's not an invalid," replied the landlady; "but she's not as
young as she was, and she's an objection to strangers. Is it anything I
can tell her?"

"No," said Spargo. "But you can, if you please, take her a message from
me. Will you kindly give her my card, and tell her that I wish to ask
her a question about John Maitland of Market Milcaster, and that I
should be much obliged if she would give me a few minutes."

"Perhaps you will sit down," said the landlady. She led Spargo into a
room which opened out upon a garden; in it two or three old ladies,
evidently inmates, were sitting. The landlady left Spargo to sit with
them and to amuse himself by watching them knit or sew or read the
papers, and he wondered if they always did these things every day, and
if they would go on doing them until a day would come when they would
do them no more, and he was beginning to feel very dreary when the door
opened and a woman entered whom Spargo, after one sharp glance at her,
decided to be a person who was undoubtedly out of the common. And as
she slowly walked across the room towards him he let his first glance
lengthen into a look of steady inspection.

The woman whom Spargo thus narrowly inspected was of very remarkable
appearance. She was almost masculine; she stood nearly six feet in
height; she was of a masculine gait and tread, and spare, muscular, and
athletic. What at once struck Spargo about her face was the strange
contrast between her dark eyes and her white hair; the hair, worn in
abundant coils round a well-shaped head, was of the most snowy
whiteness; the eyes of a real coal-blackness, as were also the eyebrows
above them. The features were well-cut and of a striking firmness; the
jaw square and determined. And Spargo's first thought on taking all
this in was that Miss Baylis seemed to have been fitted by Nature to be
a prison wardress, or the matron of a hospital, or the governess of an
unruly girl, and he began to wonder if he would ever manage to extract
anything out of those firmly-locked lips.

Miss Baylis, on her part, looked Spargo over as if she was