From the mouths of babes and sucklings and from the lips of hired servants one gets wisdom in the one case and information in the other. All that the chauffeur had stated was quite true. Some five days before--and we have now three years behind us since that night when Sally Bishop tottered into Traill's arms--Mrs. Durlacher had received a letter from her brother, of whom she had seen nothing for almost six months, saying that he thought of going down to Apsley for the day. "But I make sure first," his letter concluded, "that the field is cleared. Down there, as you know, I prefer to be the only starter." She had written in reply that she had only been down to Apsley once that year herself and, furthermore, on the day he mentioned, the place would be as deserted of human beings as London is in the heart of July--meaning thereby that any place is a wilderness which is empty of one's self and one's associates. That she had written by return of post; then, two days later, her mind had caught an impression--a wandering insect that the flimsy web of a spider clutches by chance. He had gone down to Apsley before this, many a time. She knew that he had a lingering fondness for the place which no amount of gluttony of Bohemianism could ever wipe out. But he had never taken these precautions before. He had chanced his luck; if he had found people there, then he had forced a retreat as soon as possible. But now he was going out of his way--writing a letter, an action foreign to the whole of his nature--to ensure that he should be alone. The circumstance--for circumstance there must be, just as there is the puff of wind that drifts the wandering insect to the spider's web--that brought the impression to her mind, was the brief report of a cross-examination in the divorce courts, conducted by J.H. Traill. She knew that in the last two years he had, in a desultory way, been gleaning briefs from the great field where others reaped. That had stood for little in her mind; for though she had always realized that in temperament and intellect he would make an excellent barrister, she had never believed that he would throw aside the Bohemian side of his nature sufficiently to gain ambition. Now, in this stray report, she beheld between the lines the successful man. His cross-examination had won the case, for his side. Its ability was undoubted, even to her untutored mind, and from this, in that indirect method--taking no heed of the straight line--by which women come leaping to their admirable conclusions, she received the impression that when Traill came down to Apsley, he would not come alone.