‘I thought this morning,’ he said, ‘when I was told she was gone, that it was a dose of chloral. All women like her take chloral, and all women like her are apt to take a sudden disgust with life.’ ‘Poor Artémise?’ said Lady William, who was always fair and rarely unkind. ‘Do any of us know what kind of woman she was? She has never had justice all her life, and with all that power and independence and spirit, she would have made a better man than a woman. I cannot think if she had known how much I wanted her that she would have gone away.’ To this Leo made no reply. He thought he knew a great deal better. He thought it was because of a cruel plot with his mother that Artémise had disappeared. But he would not destroy Lady William’s confidence, nor did he dare betray how much more he knew about the matter, and the cause of her anxiety to see Artémise than had ever been confided to him. But he walked on by her side repeating what he would do. He would go to London and take the boxes with him. He would wait at the station she had indicated till she came. But she might not come. She might send a stranger. ‘_Bien!_’ said Leo. ‘I will be there. I will follow, whoever it may be. I will not lose sight of her property, her boxes, till I have found her or some clue to her. Dear lady, the boxes--that is the best of guides: for what is a woman without her “things”? Is it not so?’ ‘You are always safe to have a theory about women to fall back upon,’ said Lady William, beguiled into a laugh; and then they reached the door of the cottage, and Leo, who was not invited to cross the threshold, had nothing for it but to go away.