“But,” rejoined Lady Molly, earnestly, “I mean as soon as possible--to-morrow, by special licence. You can wire to Mr. Hurford to-night, and he will see about it the first thing in the morning. We can travel up to town by the night train. Father and Mary will come with me. Father has promised, you know, and we can be married to-morrow … I think that would be the quickest way.” There was a pause. I could well imagine how astonished and perturbed Captain Hubert must be feeling. It was such a strange request for a woman to make at such a time. I could see by the expression of his eyes that he was trying to read her thoughts. But she looked up quite serenely at him, and, frankly, I do not think that he had the slightest inkling of the sublime motive which lay at the back of her strange insistence. “You prefer to be married in London rather than here?” he asked quite simply. “Yes,” she replied; “I desire to be married in London to-morrow.” A few moments later my dear lady quietly shut the door again, and I heard and saw no more; but half an hour later she called me. She was alone in her boudoir, bravely trying to smile through a veil of tears. Captain Hubert’s footsteps could still be heard going along the hall below. Lady Molly listened until the final echo of that tread died away in the distance; then she buried her sweet face on my shoulder and sobbed her very heart out. “Get ready as quickly as you can, Mary,” she said to me when the paroxysm had somewhat subsided. “We go up to town by the 9.10.” “Is his lordship coming with us, my lady?” I asked. “Oh, yes!” she said, whilst a bright smile lit up her face. “Father is simply grand … and yet he knows.” “Knows what, my lady?” I queried instinctively, for Lady Molly had paused, and I saw a look of acute pain once more darken her soft, grey eyes. “My father knows,” she said, slowly and almost tonelessly, “that half an hour ago the police found a weighted stick in the Elkhorn Woods not far from the spot where Mr. Steadman was murdered. The stick has the appearance of having been very vigorously cleaned and scraped recently, in spite of which fact tiny traces of blood are still visible on the leaden knob. The inspector showed my father that stick. I saw it too. It is the property of Captain Hubert de Mazareen, and by to-morrow, at the latest, it will be identified as such.” There was silence in the little boudoir now: a silence broken only by the sound of dull sobs which rose from my dear lady’s overburdened heart. Lady Molly at this moment had looked into the future, and with that unerring intuition which has since been of such immense service to her she had already perceived the grim web which Fate was weaving round the destiny of the man she loved. I said nothing. What could I say? I waited for her to speak again. The first words she uttered after the terrible pronouncement which she had just made were: