But setting the romance and the tenderness thereof aside for a moment, John Gore found himself face to face with some very sinister and savage questions. Plodding back over the grass toward the beech-thicket where he had left his horse, he began to scan the past as he walked, beating up memories with the keenness of a lawyer sifting evidence. Why had they mewed the girl up in this ruin of a place? Why had they lied to him about her madness? What had they to fear from her that they had made such a secret of the thing? Barbara herself had seemed haunted by some hidden anguish, some mysterious dread that had made her shudder at the simplest question. He recalled all that he had heard concerning her—the mystery of her father’s death, her moodiness and silence, the fears my lord had expressed as to her state of mind. He retold, piece by piece, the tale his father had told him on the night of his return from Yorkshire in September. Why had they gotten her into their power, made some pretence of madness, and shut her up with such keepers, and at the mercy of a ruffian’s fist? The inevitable answer was that Barbara had discovered some secret that my Lord Gore and her mother were fiercely compelled to conceal. It had not been madness on her part, but perhaps too much knowledge, that had led them to seize such sinister methods. As for the secret itself, the core and pith of the whole mystery! He could only recall the tale his father had told him, and knit his brows over it like a man meeting the sleet of a storm. Now John Gore was a man of action, and as such laid his plans that night. He was going to take Barbara out of Thorn, for all the plots and intrigues and miserable shadows of shame the whole world might boast. There was the fellow Grylls to be dealt with, his father’s creature, and though his heart smote him at the thought of it, he was grimly determined to lose no chance. Whatever authority the man might have, he might at least be robbed of information. Captain Grylls would probably spend the night at Thorn, and might be dealt with when he sallied out in the morning.