It was rather a crestfallen little man who re-entered the house after leaving Lady Penterton. The afternoon was passing, and he had made no progress whatever; more than that, which was negative, he reproached himself with a positive act of unnecessary brutality. Why had he asked her that question about Sir Roger and their son? It was ten years ago and quite beside his inquiry. He cursed Timmins in his heart; if he hadn’t had the story forced on his mind that same afternoon, he would never have wasted his time and put an old and tragedy-burdened lady to further pain. Humblethorne resolved to devote the remainder of the day exclusively to an examination of the rooms, and especially the windows, of the ground floor. He accordingly made his way to the dining-room and began an unhurried, methodical examination. He worked intently and yet his whole mind was not on his task. The firm yet sensitive mouth he had just been watching recalled to him some other mouth he had seen, and he could not think whose. Mouths were a speciality with Humblethorne; a mouth was difficult to disguise, even a beard and moustache could not hide its tendencies completely and nothing else hid them at all; and the mouth betrayed more than any other feature. Much of his firm belief originated, as men’s beliefs will, in a single successful instance of clever identification, and it had not been weakened by later failures. He was convinced he had seen a mouth of just the same character before; when and where he was quite unable to recall. It might be of no importance at all, a mere coincidence; it might, on the other hand, assist: it annoyed him that he could not remember, especially as in that elusive game the mind plays with every one it seemed just round the corner, as it were, of his memory. He worked over the whole dining-room with this dual mind, but nothing rewarded his industry. He went outside and satisfied himself from there that no one had either attempted to force his way in or, as far as could be seen, had entered through either window. He then went along the outside of the house past the hall to the smoking-room window, examined this without result, turned the corner to the south, the garden side, and was brought up short. In front of the third window on that side, which was the first of the two in the drawing-room, he saw a girl kneeling down and earnestly studying the soil in the narrow bed immediately below. Such a proceeding interested Humblethorne to an amazing degree: instantly desisting from his own search, he moved along the edge of grass till he could see what was attracting her attention. The soil had been obviously trampled; the rain on the day preceding the murder had been heavy and the impress of a foot was clearly visible. At the same instant that he noticed this, Evelyn perceived that she was not alone.