Neither Mr. Royce nor myself was quite equal to the routine work of the office next morning. We had solved the mystery, indeed; but so far from bringing us relief, the solution had brought us a terrible unrest. Miss Lawrence had chosen her words well when she had said that the marriage was "quite, quite impossible." Yet who could have guessed a reason so dark, so terrifying, so unanswerable! Small wonder that she had fled, that her first thought had been to put the ocean between herself and her lover. How could she meet him, how look him in the eyes, with that secret weighing upon her? How would she face him when she found him awaiting her at Liverpool? I shuddered at thought of that meeting. We should have held Curtiss back; we should have known that it was no idle whim, no empty fear which had driven her over-sea. Resolutely I tried to put such thoughts behind me, and to apply myself to the mass of work which had accumulated during my three days' absence. Was it only three days? It seemed weeks, months, since that moment when I opened the telegram from Mr. Royce which summoned me to Elizabeth. But they would not be frowned down, for there were many questions still unanswered. What had been Lucy Kingdon's connection with the mystery? Above all, why had Mrs. Lawrence permitted the courtship to go on? Perhaps she had not known--only at the last moment, after her daughter's disappearance, had she suspected. No doubt, it was that sudden revelation, confirmed, perhaps, by Lucy Kingdon, coming to her after she had left us in the library, which had struck her white and tremulous, which had urged her to tell me that the search must cease. Yet, even then, she had spoken as though the marriage might be arranged, as though it were not impossible! She had said that Curtiss himself should choose! What had she meant by that? Was there some depth which we had not yet touched, some turn to the tragedy which we did not suspect? Had we really found the solution, after all? My mind flew back to the Kingdon women, with a sort of fascination. What had Harriet Kingdon meant by that wild outburst of hers? "There are others," she had said, "who have waived their rights and torn their hearts and withered in silence----" What had she meant by that? What secret was it had torn her heart? Were the words merely a meaningless outburst, an incoherent cry, the result of a mind disordered? I could not bring myself to think so, but cudgel my brain as I might, I could read no meaning into them. Yet it was for her that Mrs. Lawrence had sent at that supreme moment when I revealed to her the secret of the letter; it was of her she had spoken when she cried, "I thought it was that woman!" Harriet Kingdon had known the secret, then, and had kept silence.