"Your cousin was a damned clever chap!" said Tansley incisively. "He'd got brains, my dear sir, and where women--cleverish women, anyhow--are concerned, brains are going to win all the way and come in winners by as many lengths as you please! Mrs. Saumarez, I understand, is a woman who dabbles in politics, and your cousin interested her. And when a woman gets deeply interested in a man----?" "I guess you're right," assented Brent. "Well, I'll step along and see her." He left Tansley in the hotel and went away along the market-place, wondering a good deal about the information just given to him. So there was a coolness between his cousin and Wellesley, was there, a coolness that amounted, said Tansley, to something stronger? Did it amount to jealousy? Did the jealousy lead to----? But at that point Brent gave up speculating. If there was anything in this new suggestion, Mrs. Saumarez would hold the key. Once more he was face to face with the fact that had steadily obtruded itself upon him during the last two days: that here in this time-worn old place there were folks who had secrets and did things in a curiously secret fashion. Mrs. Saumarez's house stood a little way back from the street called Abbey Gate, an old, apparently Early Jacobean mansion, set amidst the elms for which Hathelsborough was famous, so profusely and to such a height did they grow all over the town. A smart parlour-maid, who looked inquisitively at him, and was evidently expecting his arrival, admitted Brent, and led him at once along a half-lighted hall into a little room, where the light of a shaded lamp shone on a snug and comfortable interior and on rows of more books than young and pretty women generally possess. Left alone for a few minutes, Brent glanced round the well-filled shelves, and formed the opinion that Mrs. Saumarez went in for very solid reading, chiefly in the way of social and political economy. He began to see now why she and the murdered Mayor had been such close friends--the subjects that apparently interested her had been those in which Wallingford had always been deeply absorbed. Maybe, then, Mrs. Saumarez had been behind the Reform party in Hathelsborough?--there was a woman wire-puller at the back of these matters as a rule, he believed--that sort of thing, perhaps, was Mrs. Saumarez's little hobby. He turned from these speculations to find her at his elbow. "Thank you for coming, Mr. Brent," she said softly.