This terse reply seemed to disconcert Lord Florencecourt, who left him without further protest or comment, and made straight for the park. George went back to his own house and inquired if Sundran had returned. On learning that she had not, he went up stairs in search of his wife, but was told she had gone out soon after he himself left the house. Her husband was not to wait for her to dinner, as she had gone to see Mrs. Ellis and might stay to tea with her. Though this freak was perfectly consistent with Nouna’s capricious character, George was just in the mood to regard the message with vague suspicions of some trick. However, as he did not know Mrs. Ellis’s address, he had no means of following her, and seeing that it was already nearly six o’clock, he started off at once for Mary Street. The door of No. 36 was opened by a young servant, apparently new to the place, who told him, in answer to his inquiries, that a black woman had come there that afternoon to see Mr. Rahas, adding that after staying a very short time she had gone away again in the cab which brought her, Mr. Rahas himself putting her in, giving the direction to the cabman, and at the last moment jumping in after her. “I suppose you don’t remember what the direction was?” The girl was a cockney, and scented backsheesh. She nodded with much shrewdness. George put his hand to his pocket. “Waterloo station--side for Richmond,” she said promptly. Richmond! George remembered the address given by Captain Pascoe in his note. It might be only a coincidence, but a coincidence when one is on the track of a mystery becomes either a guiding or a misguiding light. He asked, as he dropped a half-crown into the girl’s hand, whether Mr. Rahas had returned home, but it was not with the intention of settling accounts with him then. On learning therefore that he had not come back yet, George simply went away and got as quickly as he could to Waterloo. Thoughts of Lord Florencecourt, Madame di Valdestillas, and the haze of inconsequent romance which seemed to surround their conduct to their daughter faded before a fiery fear that this untamable sun-child to whom he had given all his heart had been led into some trap by Rahas; for George suddenly remembered that, as he did not know Captain Pascoe’s handwriting, the signature might have been merely a blind. Ridiculously unlikely as the supposition was, the unhappy young husband could think of no less fantastic explanation of the facts; no reasoning could have dissolved his belief that it was to Thames Lawn, Richmond, that her sudden journey had been taken, and his only comfort was in knowing that he had followed her up so quickly that his arrival there could scarcely fail to be within less than an hour of hers. At Richmond he darted out of the station and jumped into a fly. “Thames Lawn. Drive as fast as you can,” he said. The driver, instead of starting, turned, after the manner of his kind, to debate.