nervous, that's what was the matter with her,--so she told herself
angrily. No doubt this was a letter for Mr. Sleuth; the lodger must
have relations and acquaintances somewhere in the world. All
gentlefolk have. But when she picked the small envelope off the
hall floor, she saw it was a letter from Daisy, her husband's daughter.

"Bunting!" she called out sharply. "Here's a letter for you."

She opened the door of their sitting-room and looked in. Yes, there
was her husband, sitting back comfortably in his easy chair, reading
a paper. And as she saw his broad, rather rounded back, Mrs. Bunting
felt a sudden thrill of sharp irritation. There he was, doing
nothing--in fact, doing worse than nothing--wasting his time
reading all about those horrid crimes.

She sighed--a long, unconscious sigh. Bunting was getting into
idle ways, bad ways for a man of his years. But how could she
prevent it? He had been such an active, conscientious sort of man
when they had first made acquaintance. . .

She also could remember, even more clearly than Bunting did himself,
that first meeting of theirs in the dining-room of No. 90 Cumberland
Terrace. As she had stood there, pouring out her mistress's glass of
port wine, she had not been too much absorbed in her task to have a
good out-of-her-eye look at the spruce, nice, respectable-looking
fellow who was standing over by the window. How superior he had
appeared even then to the man she already hoped he would succeed as
butler!

To-day, perhaps because she was not feeling quite herself, the past