scratched his head and couldn't tell us. All that we got out of him was
he wouldn't like to have her for a lodger--'she'd frighten his missus.'
Oh, and he did say that she looked dead-tired, and that he advised her
not to walk to Feetham, but to wait for the five o'clock bus that goes
from the village to the station. But she said she liked walking, and
would find some cool place in the park to sit in--till it was time to
catch the train."

"She was well-dressed, he said," added Buntingford, addressing himself to
Cynthia Welwyn, who sat beside him; "and his description of her hat and
veil, etc., quite agreed with old Stimson's account."

There was a silence, in which everybody seemed to be trying to piece the
evidence together as to the mysterious onlooker of the night, and make a
collected whole of it. Buntingford and Geoffrey were especially
thoughtful and preoccupied. At last the former, after smoking a while
without speaking, got up with the remark that he must see to some letters
before post.

"Oh, no!"--pleaded Helena, intercepting him, and speaking so that he only
should hear. "To-morrow's Whitsunday, and Monday's Bank Holiday. What's
the use of writing letters? Don't you remember--you promised to show me
those drawings before dinner--and may Geoffrey come, too?"

A sudden look of reluctance and impatience crossed Buntingford's face.
Helena perceived it at once, and drew back. But Buntingford said
immediately:

"Oh, certainly. In half an hour, I'll have the portfolios ready."