Here I paused suddenly, for I had made a rather curious observation. The reflection in a mirror is, as everybody knows, reversed laterally; so that the right hand of a person appears to be the left, and vice versa. But in the present case, no reversal seemed to have taken place. The figure in the reflection was writing with his right hand. Obviously, then, the real person was writing with his left. This put a rather different aspect on the affair. Up to the present, I had been disposed to think that Sylvia had been unduly disturbed; for there are plenty of ill-bred bounders to be met in any public place who will stare a good-looking girl out of countenance. But now my suspicions were all awake. It is true that left-handed men are as common as blackberries; but still-- “Can you tell me, Miss Vyne,” I asked, as we worked our way towards the other end of the room, “if this man is at all like the one who frightened you so in Millfield Lane?” “No, he is not. I am sure of that. The man in the lane was a good deal taller and thinner.” “Well,” said I, “whoever he is, I want to have a good look at him, and the best plan will be to turn our attention to the sculpture. Shall we go and look at that rather remarkable pink bust? That will give our friend a chance of another stare at you, and, if he doesn’t take it, I will go and inspect him where he sits.” The bust to which I had referred was executed in a curious rose-tinted marble, very crystalline and translucent, a material that suited the soft, girlish features of its subject admirably. It stood on an isolated pedestal quite near the settee on which the suspicious stranger was sitting, and I hoped that our presence might lure him from his retreat. “I don’t think,” I said, taking up a position with my back to the settee, “that I have ever seen any marble quite like this. Have you?” “No,” replied Sylvia. “It looks like coarse lump sugar stained pink. And how very transparent it is; too transparent for most subjects.” Here she gave a quick, nervous glance at me, and I was aware of a shadow thrown by some person standing behind me. Had our friend risen to the bait already? I continued the conversation in good audible tones. “Very awkward these isolated pedestals would be for slovenly artists who scamp the back of their work.” With this remark I moved round the pedestal as if to examine the back of the bust, and Sylvia followed. The move brought us opposite the person who had been standing behind me; and, sure enough, it was the gentleman from the settee. I continued to talk--rather blatantly, I fear--commenting on the careful treatment of the hair and the backs of the ears; and meanwhile took an occasional swift glance at the man opposite. He appeared to be gazing in wrapt admiration at the bust, but his glance, too, occasionally wandered; and when it did, the “point of fixation,” as the oculists would express it, was Sylvia’s crucifix, which was still uncovered.