"You say that you have had it because you need a change. Let me
suggest that you take one. How would Lausanne do, my dear
Watson--first-class tickets and all expenses paid on a princely
scale?"

"Splendid! But why?"

Holmes leaned back in his armchair and took his notebook from his
pocket.

"One of the most dangerous classes in the world," said he, "is
the drifting and friendless woman. She is the most harmless and
often the most useful of mortals, but she is the inevitable
inciter of crime in others. She is helpless. She is migratory.
She has sufficient means to take her from country to country and
from hotel to hotel. She is lost, as often as not, in a maze of
obscure pensions and boardinghouses. She is a stray chicken in a
world of foxes. When she is gobbled up she is hardly missed. I
much fear that some evil has come to the Lady Frances Carfax."

I was relieved at this sudden descent from the general to the
particular. Holmes consulted his notes.

"Lady Frances," he continued, "is the sole survivor of the direct
family of the late Earl of Rufton. The estates went, as you may
remember, in the male line. She was left with limited means, but
with some very remarkable old Spanish jewellery of silver and
curiously cut diamonds to which she was fondly attached--too
attached, for she refused to leave them with her banker and