Still, Mrs. Van Dorn spoke in that curiously ashamed and indignant
voice. Mrs. Lee contradicted her no further.

"Well, I suppose you must be right," said she. "There can't be
anybody at home; but it is strange they went off and did not even
shut the front door."

"I don't know what the Ranger girls would have said, if they knew it.
They would have had a fit at the bare idea of going away for ever so
short a time, and leaving the house and furniture alone and the door
unlocked."

"Their furniture is here now, I suppose?"

"Yes, I suppose so--some of it, anyway, but I don't know how much
furniture these people bought, of course."

"Mr. Lee said he heard they had such magnificent things."

"I heard so, but you hear a good deal that isn't so in Banbridge!"

"That is true. I suppose you knew the house and the Ranger girls'
furniture so well that you could tell at a glance what was new and
what wasn't?"

"Yes, I could."

As with one impulse both women turned and peered through a green maze
of trees and bushes at Samson Rawdy, several yards distant.