The doctor rubbed his hands to hide a little embarrassment. "Yes, I see you have come," he said. "But how? Did you walk from Sheffield?" "I came with Nickson." The doctor stopped rubbing, then went on faster, as his thoughts flew from Nickson to the tall gentleman, and for some mysterious reason from the tall gentleman to Pleasance. He had never consciously traced this connection before, but something in his assistant's face helped him to it now. "He tells me," Woolley continued, making a neat ball of his gloves and smiling at the floor, "that you had a strange case here, a case he was mixed up with, and that you made a cure of it." "Yes." "The fellow has cleared out, I suppose?" "Well, no," the doctor stammered, feeling warm. How odd it was that he had never seen into what a pit of imprudence he was sinking! He had been harbouring a lunatic, or one who had acted as a lunatic--a criminal certainly; in no light a person fit to associate with his daughter. "No, he is still here," he stammered. "I think--I suppose he will be leaving in a day or two!" "Here still, is he?" Woolley said with a sneer. "A queer sort of parlour-boarder, sir. May I ask where he is at present?" "I think he is out of doors somewhere." "Alone?" When the doctor thought over the scene afterwards he whistled when his memory brought him to that "Alone." He knew then that the fat was in the fire. He saw that Woolley had pumped the carrier--who had been to the house several times since the affair--and drawn his own conclusions. "I rather think," he ventured, "I am not sure, but I think----" "I do not think," the other said dryly, "I see." He pointed through the open door, and alas! the tall gentleman and Pleasance were visible approaching the house. They had that moment emerged from the shrubbery, and were crossing the lawn. The girl was carrying a basket full of marsh marigolds, the man had a great bush of hawthorn on the end of his stick. They were both looking at the front of the house without a thought that other eyes were upon them. Pleasance's face, on which the light fell strongly, was far from gay, her smile but a sad one; yet there was a tenderness in the one and the other which was not calculated to reassure a jealous onlooker. "So!" Woolley muttered, his fingers closing like a vise on the doctor's arm. "Let me deal with this." CHAPTER III