"That is so like Mrs. Wornock. The ways of society are a foreign language to her. Had you taken her a German organist with long hair, or a spiritualist, or an esoteric Buddhist, she would have received him with open arms--she would have been _simpatica_ to the highest degree, and would have impressed him with the idea of a sensitive nature and a temperament akin to genius, while I dare say Lady Emily thought her a fool." "She certainly did not give the lady credit for superior intelligence." "Of course not. She has not even average intelligence in the affairs of social life. She has lived all these years at Discombe--she might be in touch with some of the best people in the county--and she has learnt nothing, except to play the organ. I believe she has toiled unremittingly at _that_," concluded Mrs. Mornington, contemptuously. "I have half forgotten what you told me about her in the first instance. I think you spoke of a mystery in her early life." "The only mystery was that old Wornock should have married her, and that he should have told us nothing about her belongings. Had she been a lady, we must have heard something about her people in the last five and twenty years; and yet there is a refinement about her which makes me think she could not have sprung from the gutter." "The gutter! No, indeed! She has an air of exceptional refinement. I should take her to be the offspring of an effete race--a crystallization. In her early married life, when she and Mr. Wornock were living together at Discombe, she had friends, I presume. They must have had visitors occasionally--a house-party?" "Not they. You must remember that it was not more than six months after Mr. Wornock brought his young wife home when he took her away again----" "But in the interim," interrupted Allan, eagerly, "they must have had visitors in the house! He would be proud to exhibit his pretty young wife. There must have been men-friends of his coming and going during that time." "I think not. He was a dry chip; and I don't think he had made many friends in the forty years he had reigned at Discombe. I never heard of any one staying in the house, either at that time or previously. He was hospitable in a casual way to the neighbourhood while he was a bachelor--gave a hunt breakfast every winter, and a good many dinners--but he was not a man to make friends. He was an ardent politician and an ardent Radical, and would have quarrelled with any one who wasn't of his way of thinking." A blank here. No hint of a too-frequent visitor, of one figure standing out against the quiet background of home-life, of one person whose coming and going had been marked enough to attract attention.