e suffocating this weather. Let's go
back and have some tay!'

They found the much desired apartment awaiting their entry. It was a
sort of combination bed and sitting-room, and the table was prettily
spread with high tea in the bow-window, a bunch of flowers in the
midst, and a best-parlour chair on each side. Here they shared the
meal by the ruddy light of the vanishing sun. But though the view
had been engaged, regardless of expense, exclusively for Baptista's
pleasure, she did not direct any keen attention out of the window. Her
gaze as often fell on the floor and walls of the room as elsewhere,
and on the table as much as on either, beholding nothing at all.

But there was a change. Opposite her seat was the door, upon which
her eyes presently became riveted like those of a little bird upon a
snake. For, on a peg at the back of the door, there hung a hat; such
a hat--surely, from its peculiar make, the actual hat--that had been
worn by Charles. Conviction grew to certainty when she saw a
railway ticket sticking up from the band. Charles had put the ticket
there--she had noticed the act.

Her teeth almost chattered; she murmured something incoherent. Her
husband jumped up and said, 'You are not well! What is it? What shall
I get 'ee?'

'Smelling salts!' she said, quickly and desperately; 'at the chemist's
shop you were in just now.'

He jumped up like the anxious old man that he was, caught up his own
hat from a back table, and without observing the other hastened out
and downstairs.

Left alone she gazed and gazed at the back of the door, then
spasmodically rang the bell. An honest-looking country maid-servant
appeared in response.

'A hat!' murmured Baptista, pointing with her finger. 'It does not
belong to us.'

'O yes, I'll take it away,' said the young woman with some hurry 'It
belongs to the other gentleman.'

She spoke with a certain awkwardness, and took the hat out of the
room. Baptista had recovered her outward composure. 'The other
gentleman?' she said. 'Where is the other gentleman?'

'He's in the next room, ma'am. He removed out of this to oblige 'ee.'

'How can you say so? I should hear him if he were there,' said
Baptista, sufficiently recovered to argue down an apparent untruth.

'He's there,' said the girl, hardily.

'Then it is strange that he makes no noise,' said Mrs Heddegan,
convicting the girl of falsity by a look.

'He makes no noise; but it is not strange,' said the servan