The consequence was that Patty was more and more at the dingy house, her light step passing, as it were, too quickly over the pollution around to take taint therefrom. There were times, though, when the incidents at the place seemed to repel her, and she would determine to stay away; but Janet's troubles, and the unvarying kindness of Canau would have been sufficient to draw her there without the yearning look in Janet's great pleading eyes when her friend had been longer away than usual. And when suspicion had fallen upon the house, let people think what they might, Patty told herself that it was her duty to cling to her friends the closer for their troubles. Now, if in these nineteenth century busy hurrying days we were in want of a seer, we should hardly go to the ranks of the constabulary to seek him; but all the same it seemed as if police constable James Braid was right in his prophetic mind when, in allusion to various visits that he had seen paid by Lionel Redgrave to Decadia, he shook his head, and exclaimed, "You'll go there wunst too often--wunst too often, my fine fellow." Police constable James Braid must have been right; for it came to pass one day that Harry Clayton was seated in his rooms with the "oak sported," a wet towel round his weary head, and his mind far away in the antique, when there was a summons at the door, and his attendant placed a telegram in his hand. He took the envelope eagerly, for to a nearly friendless man, messages, even letters, were but occasional visitants; but his countenance rapidly assumed a pained expression, as he comprehended more fully the meaning of the abrupt words he read, and associated them with the past. The message was as follows:-- "From Richard Redgrave, Regent Street, to Harry Clayton, Caius College, Cambridge.--Pray come to me directly: Lionel has disappeared." For a few moments Harry stood with the paper half crushed in his hand, a flood of recollections, dammed back by hard study, now sweeping all before it, and causing him intense suffering. "I feared as much--I might have known it would come to this," he said, bitterly; and then he paced rapidly up and down his room, his brow knit and the face of Patty seeming to torture him, as he tried to drive it from his mind. Within an hour, he was at the Cambridge Station, and in due time reached Lionel's chambers in the Quadrant, to obtain the following brief information from Mr and Mrs Stiff. That Lionel Redgrave had gone out one evening--this was the eighth day since--and had not returned. That they had waited three days, and then, feeling very uneasy, they had written down to Elton Court to Sir Richard Redgrave, who had immediately come up to town. Sir Richard was now absent, but ten minutes later he returned, to greet Harry most warmly.