Mrs. Blyth followed the progress of this strange story on Madonna’s fingers with great interest to the end; and then--after suggesting that the candle might have gone out through some defect in the make of it, or might really have been extinguished by a puff of air which the girl was too much occupied in looking for her bodkin-case to attend to--earnestly charged her not to say a word on the subject of her adventure to Valentine, when she went to help him in packing up his painting materials. “He is nervous and uncomfortable enough already, poor fellow, at the idea of leaving home,” thought Mrs. Blyth; “and if he heard the story about the candle going out, it would only make him more uneasy still.” To explain this consideration to Madonna was to ensure her discretion. She accordingly kept her adventure in the studio so profound a secret from Mr. Blyth, that he no more suspected what had happened to her, than he suspected what had happened to the Hair Bracelet, when he hastily assured himself that he was leaving his bureau properly locked, by trying the lid of it the last thing before going away. Such were the circumstances under which Valentine left home. He was not, however, the only traveler of the reader’s acquaintance, whose departure from London took place on the morning after the mysterious extinguishing of Madonna’s light in the painting-room. By a whimsical coincidence, it so happened that, at the very same hour when Mr. Blyth was journeying in one direction, to paint portraits, Mr. Matthew Marksman (now, perhaps, also recognizable as Mr. Matthew Grice) was journeying in another, to pay a second visit to Dibbledean. Not a visit of pleasure by any means, but a visit of business--business, which, in every particular, Mat had especially intended to keep secret from Zack; but some inkling of which he had nevertheless allowed to escape him, during his past night’s conversation with the lad in Kirk Street.