"I am sure that he would have given me in charge to twenty policemen if he could, and that nothing would have pleased him better than to have had me sent to penal servitude for life." "What I can't make out is--why did he dislike you so?" "My dear, I'm afraid the explanation is simple--too simple. I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I've a notion--a very strong one--that he didn't like you. He regarded you as a nuisance; you know how he kept you in the background as long as he could; you interfered with the sort of life he liked to live; you were in his way." "He certainly never at any period of his life or mine, showed himself over-anxious for my company." "When you did become installed in town, he had formed his own plans for your future. What precisely was the arrangement between them I don't pretend to know; but I dare say I shall find out before long--it won't need much to induce Wilkes to give himself away; but I am persuaded that it was his intention that you should become Mrs. Stephen Wilkes." "But what makes you think so? It seems to me so monstrous. Fancy me as Mrs. Stephen Wilkes!" "Thank you, I'd rather not. It's only a case of intuition, I admit, but I'm convinced I'm right, and one day I may be able to give you chapter and verse. He was not over-fond of me to begin with, but when you appeared on the scene, and he saw that his best laid plans bade fair to gang agley, he suddenly began to develop a feeling towards me which ended as it has done. It's not a pretty one, but there's my explanation. But, sweetheart, that page is ended; let's turn it over and never look back at it; and all the rest of the volume--let's try our best to make it happy reading." They ate a fair lunch, considering, and enjoyed it, and afterwards returned together in a taximeter cab to Russell Square, feeling more tenderly disposed to each other, and at peace with all the world. When Miss Patterson had ate and drunk well she was apt to discover a turn for languorous sentiment which appealed to Mr. Elmore very forcibly indeed. Since, therefore, it was probably their intention to spend an amorous afternoon, the shock was all the greater when, on their arrival at No. 90, they were greeted in the hall by a tall upstanding, broad-shouldered, soldierly-looking man in whom Gladys recognised the officer of police who had brought her the news of her father's tragic fate. "Inspector Harlow," she exclaimed. "What--what are you doing here?" It was perhaps only natural that, drawing away from the policeman towards her lover, she should slip her hands through his arm as if she looked to him for protection from some suddenly threatening danger. Rodney pressed his arm closer to his side, as if to assure her she would find shelter there; though, as she uttered the visitor's name, he glanced towards him with a look which, as it were, with difficulty became an odd little smile. The visitor's manner, when he spoke, suggested mystery.