"He knew me," Sabina proceeded tranquilly; "and so we had a little chat together. I says to him, 'Who is it you take notes to at number five--the old lady or the young one?' 'Oh,' says he, 'the young one, to be sure. Scrumptious, isn't she?' 'Cynthia West?' says I. 'Yes,' he says--'and Mrs. Hubert Lepel before very long, if I've got eyes to see! He's always after her.' 'That ain't very likely,' I said, 'because he's got a young lady already in the country.' 'One in the country and one in the town,' he says, with a wink--'that's the usual style, isn't it?' And, seeing that he was disposed to be familiar, I said good-day to him and came away." "What will you do now then, Sabina?" "Well," said Sabina reflectively, "I think I shall let Mrs. Vane know. She'd be glad to have a sort of handle against her brother, I'm thinking. And these people--Mr. Dare and Miss West--seem to have got something to do with Beechfield, for I'm certain it was to Beechfield he went when he left here for that fortnight. He gave no address--that was natural maybe--but he'd got the Whitminster label on his bag when he came back. And, if Miss West was being courted by Mr. Lepel, and her father wanted to know who Mr. Lepel was and all about him, he might easily gather that Beechfield was the place to go to. I suppose he wanted to find out whether Mr. Lepel was engaged to Miss Vane or not. And I've a sort of idea too that there's something mysterious about it all. Why shouldn't he have said straight out where he was going, especially when I had already told him that I knew Whitminster so well and belonged to Beechfield? It seems to me that Mr. Dare has got something to conceal; and I'd like to know what it is before I go any farther." "Any farther!" said her aunt contemptuously. "It don't seem to me that you've got very far!" "Farther than you think," was Miss Meldreth's reply. "He's afraid of me, or else he would have come to tea this afternoon. And a woman can always manage a man that's afraid of her." Fortified by this conviction, Sabina sat down after tea to indite a letter to Mrs. Vane. She was not a very deft scribe, and the spelling of certain words was a mystery to her. But, with the faults of its orthography corrected the letter finally stood thus--