That Gordon should be questioned both by Mrs. Holton and Rose was inevitable. Not that Mrs. Holton, with hazy memories of talking too freely while the wine had worked its spell upon her, altogether regretted that Providence had seen fit to intervene, or that Rose, after her work was done, was deeply concerned with Palmer's subsequent fate, but to both, knowing the situation as they did, the sequence of events seemed, though lacking the faintest shadow of proof, beyond all question to implicate Gordon. To both he made the same answer. He admitted that Palmer's disappearance, coming just at the time it did, was a remarkable stroke of good fortune for all of them, but as to any knowledge of it, outside of the theories advanced by the papers, he blandly professed entire ignorance. That Annie Holton should have come to her death on the night of the same day on which Palmer had disappeared, he further acknowledged to be a most remarkable coincidence, but so far as he could see, nothing more than that. And with this they were fain to be content. To Rose, indeed, the succeeding weeks brought a vague sense of injustice and disappointment. Constantly Gordon had referred to the getting of the money from Palmer as the turning point in their fortunes; the first real step towards the culmination of their plans; as marking the time when he should have leisure to be constantly at her side; and now, so far from this being so, she found as the days went by that she saw less of him even than before. Moreover, on the rare occasions when he did dine with her at Bradfield's or call at her rooms, he was preoccupied, inattentive, distraught, his mind only too plainly upon other things. And in truth, Gordon for a time had found himself more perplexed than he would perhaps have cared to own. Even with sufficient capital, and a practically certain knowledge of the future course of the metal market, the problem still remained to him how best to make use of his point of vantage. The first move in the game successfully accomplished, the second was yet to be made.