Baron, as he met this queer gaze, smiled hard at her to prevent her guessing that he smarted with the fine reproach conveyed in the tone of her last words; but she appeared able to guess everything, for she reminded him that she had not had to wait that morning till he came downstairs to know what had happened above, but had shown him at the moment how she had been conscious of it an hour before, had passed on her side the same tormented night as he, and had had to exert extraordinary self-command not to rush up to his rooms while the study of the open packets was going on. “You’re so sensitively organised and you’ve such mysterious powers that you re uncanny,” Baron declared. “I feel what takes place at a distance; that’s all.” “One would think somebody you liked was in danger.” “I told you that that was what was present to me the day I came up to see you.” “Oh, but you don’t like me so much as that,” Baron argued, laughing. She hesitated. “No, I don’t know that I do.” “It must be for someone else—the other person concerned. The other day, however, you wouldn’t let me tell you that person’s name.” Mrs. Ryves, at this, rose quickly. “I don’t want to know it; it’s none of my business.” “No, fortunately, I don’t think it is,” Baron rejoined, walking with her along the Parade. She had Sidney by the hand now, and the young man was on the other side of her. They moved toward the station—she had offered to go part of the way. “But with your miraculous gift it’s a wonder you haven’t divined.” “I only divine what I want,” said Mrs. Ryves. “That’s very convenient!” exclaimed Peter, to whom Sidney had presently come round again. “Only, being thus in the dark, it’s difficult to see your motive for wishing the papers destroyed.” Mrs. Ryves meditated, looking fixedly at the ground. “I thought you might do it to oblige me.” “Does it strike you that such an expectation, formed in such conditions, is reasonable?” Mrs. Ryves stopped short, and this time she turned on him the clouded clearness of her eyes. “What do you mean to do with them?”