But Evelyn was worried about her, worried and puzzled more than she cared to own, even to herself. For the first time in her life she did not feel sure that she altogether understood Celia. CHAPTER VI New Lights Humblethorne walked back to the Rose and Crown with a mind fully occupied: the fields, among which he had been looking forward to idling only to find that idleness of so rustic a character had no attractions for him, existed no more than if he had been walking along the streets of a town. He was absorbed in the problem he had stumbled on, and almost entirely happy. He would have been completely so if he had not retained, even in a profession most unfavourable to the growth of sentiment, a certain fresh idealism: just because it was so obviously impossible, he longed to be able to take people on trust. It was to remind himself as much as to warn Birts, that he had dwelt on the need for general suspicion in the first stages of every inquiry. He would have liked to be able, on faith alone, to narrow down the field of search. And he was never completely happy as a man, however absorbed he might become as an official, when engaged upon a case of treachery or twisted motives. Straightforward violence he understood; it was regrettable and must be punished, but it did not offend him. He envied Birts for his simple faith, especially as it seemed likely to be so little justified. There were, as he saw the case, two main avenues of inquiry; he had to satisfy himself first whether or no any one had made an entrance unassisted into the Towers, and, secondly—a subject that bore closely on the first—how far the secretary was telling the truth. The impression Castle had made upon him as a personality was distinctly favourable; the facts Castle had related and admitted just the reverse. The man was unmistakably a gentleman, Humblethorne decided, by that much misused word meaning not merely a man of birth or wealth. He was undoubtedly in a highly strung condition, and too much emphasis should not be laid on his having asked that ass, Birts, for leave to shift the body; but it was at least suggestive of a desire to hide things. It had to be borne in mind that a great deal rested at present on Castle’s word alone, that even on his own showing there was an hour and a half during which Sir Roger had not been seen, and that there had been an apparent forgetfulness, to say the least of it, in communicating with the police. Humblethorne, putting aside his personal impression of Castle, felt convinced that there was a skilful mixture of truth and falsehood in the tale he had been told, a clever juggling with the clock, a concealment of some vital fact. It would be his business to sift that truth out: there was much yet to ascertain before he felt justified in arriving at any conclusion. It was quite possible, it was even, he thought, probable that he would find some tangible piece of evidence of which there was at present so little,