“Y-yes, quite,” quavered Laura. “Please go down now. I’ll follow as soon as I’ve sponged my face. I’m sorry I made such an idiot of myself. I’m—oh, _dear_, I positively ache all over!” she collapsed over the wash-stand again. “I shall be up again to see how you are if you’re not down in five minutes,” warned Mr. Priestley from the doorway, and made a somewhat relieved escape. Just outside the door he all but collided with the landlady, who had a broom in her hand and an intense expression on her face. “Oh, sir,” said the landlady at once, “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help but hear, seeing as I was sweeping outside. Poor young lady! If you’ll take my advice, sir (and no offence meant, I’m sure) you’ll let her off lightly at first. She’ll love you all the better for it later on. I’ve been through it meself, and I know.” Mr. Priestley fled. “May I go in to do the room now, sir?” the landlady called after him, a world of emphatic meaning in her penultimate word. Mr. Priestley fled faster. In the dining-room was peace. Pulling himself together with an effort, Mr. Priestley took out a cigarette and proceeded to peruse the incredible report in the _Sunday Courier_. Eight minutes later, the cigarette between his fingers still unlighted, he had read it through three times and still he could hardly believe his eyes. “Amazing!” he commented aloud, as if to reassure himself that he really did exist and his voice really would work. “I can hardly credit it. ‘R. S. P. Doyle.’ That’s Pat Doyle. How on earth does he come to be mixed up in it?” He referred to the paper again. “‘Happened to be staying in the neighbourhood.’ Extraordinary coincidence. Whole set of extraordinary coincidences for that matter. Well, God bless my soul, what is coming now?” The entrance of Laura supplied the answer at any rate to his last question. A rehabilitated, dry-eyed, nose-powdered Laura, very different from the moaning creature of ten minutes ago. She began to apologise for her lack of self-control. “But really,” she added, not without adroitness, “seeing it all in print like that brought it home to me so forcibly. It seemed like a nightmare this morning; now I know it really is true. I ought not to have given way, I know, but I was so frightened. Terribly frightened.” She looked at him with wide eyes. “Oh, Mr. Priestley, what shall I do?” With a superhuman effort she refrained from expressing a preference for Birmingham, and regrets at finding herself in Crewe.