In the most courteous manner possible, consistent with the circumstances, Mr. Chandos explained to Mrs. Penn why the police had come for her. He had reason to believe _she_ was the person who had been disturbing the tranquillity of Chandos, he said. When she had offered her boxes for search before, he had declined to permit them to be touched: he must, much as he regretted the necessity, order them to be searched now. All this we heard later. Mrs. Penn was taken to. What she said, never transpired: resistance would have been simply foolish; and she made up for it by insolence. The police quietly did their duty; and found ample proof: a few skeleton keys, that would open any lock in the house, the chief. Her own lace was was there; Mr. Chandos's memorandum-book. She had came into the house to spy; feverishly hoping to find out the abiding place of George Heneage. Her bitter animosity against him had but grown with years. An accidental circumstance had brought to her a suspicion that George Heneage's hiding-place was in England; and she had laid her plans and entered Chandos in the full intention of discovering it. My presence there had somewhat baffled her: she could not go peeping about in my sight; she took Mr. Chandos's private book from his desk in the hope that it might help her to the discovery she had at heart, and then invented the story of losing her lace to divert the scent from herself. Later, she conceived another scheme—that of getting me out of the house; and she stole the money to put it into my box; and arranged the supposed opening of her reticule in my room, and the reading of her sealed letter; and abstracted the letter I had put on the hall-table, hoping Mr. Chandos would fall into the trap and send me from Chandos. _Now_ could be understood her former anxiety that the police should search her boxes and mine; hers were ready for the inspection, mine had the money in them; and, at that time (as I knew later) also the memorandum-book. Something else was found in her boxes besides skeleton keys—a grey cloak. Putting one thing with another, Mr. Chandos thought he had little need of further speculation as to who had stopped his horse in the avenue that night, and caused his fall from it. And the reason may as well be mentioned here, though it is anticipating our knowledge of it. She had lingered about the private groves of Chandos until dusk that afternoon, hoping to see Mr. Edwin Barley, whose house she was forbidden; in going forth at length, openly, having put her cloak on because she was cold—and how it was Hill had not seen it on her arm when talking with her in the portico, was a mystery, for she had brought it to Chandos, left it in the hall there, and taken it upon her departure—in going down the avenue she met Mr. Chandos riding up it. She had never before seen him, and she took him in the dusk for his brother. She actually thought she was encountering George Heneage; and