with the absurd violence of a man who vents his anger on the first
convenient thing that he can find. The landlady opened the door, and
looked at him in stern and silent surprise.

"Does Mrs. Ronald lodge here?" he repeated.

The landlady answered with some appearance of effort--the effort of a
person who was carefully considering her words before she permitted
them to pass her lips.

"Mrs. Ronald has taken rooms here. But she has not occupied them yet."

"Not occupied them yet?" The words bewildered him as if they had been
spoken in an unknown tongue. He stood stupidly silent on the doorstep.
His anger was gone; an all-mastering fear throbbed heavily at his
heart. The landlady looked at him, and said to her secret self: "Just
what I suspected; there _is_ something wrong!"

"Perhaps I have not sufficiently explained myself, sir," she resumed
with grave politeness. "Mrs. Ronald told me that she was staying at
Ramsgate with friends. She would move into my house, she said, when her
friends left--but they had not quite settled the day yet. She calls
here for letters. Indeed, she was here early this morning, to pay the
second week's rent. I asked when she thought of moving in. She didn't
seem to know; her friends (as I understood) had not made up their
minds. I must say I thought it a little odd. Would you like to leave
any message?"

He recovered himself sufficiently to speak. "Can you tell me where her
friends live?" he said.