And Squire Carr took out letters of administration. CHAPTER VII. ROBERT CARR'S VISIT. Mrs. Arkell sat in her drawing-room with a visitor. She was listening to what struck her as being the very strangest tale she had ever heard or dreamt of. The Reverend Mr. Prattleton, who had reached home the previous night, had come this afternoon to tell her of the disappearance of Mr. Dundyke. "Your sister wished me to give you the particulars as soon as I got home," he observed. "There was little, if any, acquaintance between you and Mr. Dundyke," he said, "but she felt sure you would feel concern for him, now he was dead, and would like to hear the details. It is a sad thing; I may say an awful thing." "I never heard of such a thing," exclaimed Mrs. Arkell, forgetting her contempt for the Dundykes in the moment's interest. "It appears incredible that such a thing could happen. Do you really think he was murdered, Mr. Prattleton?" "No, no; I don't think that," said the minor canon. "Of course there is the possibility; but I incline to the belief that he must have fallen into the lake, leaving his pocket-book on the shore. Indeed, I feel convinced of it, and I think Mrs. Dundyke felt so at last. In the first uncertainty and suspense, I hardly know what horrible things she did not fancy." "But surely all proper search was made for him!" "Of course it was. I am not sure that the police took so much interest in it, all of us being foreigners, and temporary sojourners in the town, as they would have done if a native had been missing. It was with difficulty they were persuaded to take a serious view of the case. The gentleman had only gone off somewhere else, they thought, without telling his wife. However, they did their best to find traces of him; but it proved useless." "What could have taken them to Geneva?" exclaimed Mrs. Arkell. "A desire for change and recreation, I suppose. The same that took me--that takes us all." "But----those common working-people don't require change," had been on Mrs. Arkell's tongue; but she altered the words. Mrs. Dundyke _was_ her sister, and unfortunately she could not deny it. "But----Geneva was very far to go." "Not very, in these days of travelling. It is twenty years, Mrs. Arkell, since I was on the continent, and one seems to get about there ten times as quick as formerly. It's true I took the rail this time as much as I could; the Dundykes, on the contrary, preferred the old diligences, wherever they were to be had." "Did you see Mr. Dundyke?" "No," said the minor canon. "He had disappeared--is it not a strangely sounding word?--before we reached Geneva." "What a mercy that it was not after it!" thought Mrs. Arkell, remembering the graces of manner of the ill-fated common-councilman. "Mrs. Dundyke has returned home, you say?"