e
must take place; the plot had ignominiously failed, the great questions
which were to banish Stella Ballantyne from Little Beeding had been put
and answered. He sat like a man stricken by calamity. He stammered out
reluctantly a few words to which Thresk paid little heed.

"You are satisfied then?" he asked of Pettifer; and Pettifer showed him
unexpectedly a cordial and good-humoured face.

"Yes. Let me say to you, Mr. Thresk, that ever since I began to study
this case I have wished less and less to bear hardly upon Mrs.
Ballantyne. As I read those columns of evidence the heavy figure of
Stephen Ballantyne took life again, but a very sinister life; and when I
look at Stella and think of what she went through during the years of
her married life while we were comfortably here at home I cannot but feel
a shiver of discomfort. Yes, I am satisfied and I am glad that I am
satisfied"; and with a smile which suddenly illumined his dry parched
face he held out his hand to Henry Thresk.

It was perhaps as well that the questions were over, for even while
Pettifer was speaking Stella's voice was heard in the hall. Pettifer had
just time to thrust away the envelope with the cuttings into a drawer
before she came into the room with Dick. She had been forced to leave the
three men together, but she had dreaded it. During that one hour of
absence she had lived through a lifetime of terror and anxiety. What
would Thresk tell them? What was he now telling them? She was like one
waiting downstairs while a surgical operation is being performed in the
theatre above. She had hurried Dick back to Little Deeding, and when she
came into the room her eyes roamed round in suspense from Thresk to
Hazlewood, from Hazlewood to Pettifer. She saw the tray of miniatures
upon the table.

"You admire the collection?" she said to Thresk.

"Very much," he answered, and Pettifer took her by the arm and in a voice
of kindness which she had never heard him use before he said:

"Now tell me about your house. That's much more interesting."

CHAPTER XXV

IN THE LIBRARY

Henry Thresk took Mrs. Pettifer in to dinner that night and she found him
poor company. He tried indeed by fits and starts to entertain her, but
his thoughts were elsewhere. He was in a great pother and trouble about
Stella Ballantyne, who sat over against him on the other side of the
table. She wore no traces of the consternation which his words had caused
her a couple of