“No one has; it was locked and sealed after the inquest by my--the detective,” quickly correcting himself. “It was only opened two days ago by him, when he made a last search, before giving up hope, and before the new family came to him. And in the last search he found something.” “What?” Her impatience made her eyes burn in the dusk. “That’s what I’m going up to see. ‘A trinket, or a part of one,’ he said.” “A trinket!” involuntarily the words escaped her, with an anxiety that was pain. Yet she was sure that her mother had not lost anything that awful day, unless--she had not known she did! “It may be something I have seen before,” said Cylmer coolly, and once more that hand of ice was on her heart. “So I shall go up to-morrow.” “To-morrow!” What should she do all the long day when he was gone. When each minute might be bringing detection nearer? “You won’t stay long?” she added imploringly. “You’ll come back?” “As soon as I possibly can; the next day at farthest. Shall you miss me?” “Miss you!” She gathered all her strength and laughed lightly, without a trace of care. “I have not had you long enough to miss you.” They were close to Marchant’s Hold now. The lighted lamps shone rosy from the drawing-room windows, and she kept carefully out of the patches of light on the gravel where they stood. “I shall miss you, then, every second! And, look here, Ismay! I hate the business. I only do it because he was my friend, and I feel bound to it. Do you understand?” “I dare say you will hate it more before it is done,” she said, as if in idleness, and afterward he remembered, when the stone he had set rolling threatened to crush all he loved on earth. “But it interests me in a dreadful sort of way. When you come back you will tell me what you found, won’t you? I won’t tell. It shall be your secret, like your loving me is mine.” “I’ll tell you anything you ask,” he said tenderly. “But I wish you would let me have my way, and be engaged to you openly. I would like to go in and tell Cristiane now!” He moved toward the great door with so much purpose that she flew after him. “No, no!” she cried. “Mother hates you; she’d send me away straight off; you’d never see me again. If you tell it means that I shall suffer.” “Then I’ll wait forever.” In the shadow of an evergreen he caught her to him, as a man holds his only love on earth. “Till you tell me to speak I will hold my tongue. Will that satisfy you? And, instead of my coming to Marchant’s Hold, will you meet me at the stile, at five, the day after to-morrow? It will be best, if we are to keep our secret.” She gave a long sigh of relief, resting for perhaps the last time against the strong shoulders of the man who might know things when he came from London that would part them forever. “That is all I want,” she said; “just to let no one know but us two! I must go now; good-by.” “But I want to come in.” He had not let her go. She smiled in the darkness.