Dick, who had been trembling with anger through the interview, had to agree, in the calm moments which followed, that the reporter had taken a sane view of the matter. When he met Leslie a few minutes later, he told her of the interview. She was in the study alone, and had just finished writing a letter, which lay face downward on the blotting-pad. She saw him glance at the envelope and turned it up. It was addressed to Fabrian Gilder.

“What have you said?” he asked.

“I’ve told him that I’ve considered the matter, and I’ve decided that I could not marry him – in any circumstances it would be impossible now, so soon after Harry’s disappearance.”

He picked up the letter and, taking out his pocket-case, tore off a stamp and affixed it.

“I’ll see that this goes,” he said grimly. Then, seeing her tired face: “Poor old girl, you’re having a bad time.”

The pressure of her hand, the love and sympathy in her voice, were almost too much for him, and he had to set his teeth or he would have taken her in his arms and, in that place of tragedy and horror, told her of the love that was shaking him, and which had added a new and fearful burden to his overstrung nerves.

“Go to bed early,” he said, with an effort at gaiety, “and rise with the dawn. I shall be busy till very late.”

“The butler was telling me that you have ordered a basket of food for the policemen.”

Not a muscle of his face moved.

“That is so; one or two men who are patrolling the cutting need a little light refreshment. They cannot get to the house and we haven’t men to relieve them.”

She was sensible enough not to pursue the subject.

It was only on her earnest entreaty that, as the night drew on, Mary Wenner remained. The girl was a bundle of nerves, started at every sound, paled and flushed with the opening of a door, and the sound of a falling plate in the servery whilst they were at dinner had made her scream.

“I can’t help it, my dear; I’m naturally temperamental,” she explained. “And this house has got me shivering! I can’t leave another young lady without a chaperone, or I’d fly off to London before it got dark.”

She had been in the library that afternoon, she told Leslie, and the sight of that familiar room with its empty chair had been almost the last straw.