“Yes, I’m a brute to grouse,” he said, almost gruffly, and seemed to imply in some subtle fashion that she was a provocative party to his brutality. It occurred to her as strange that he never spoke about the time when she would be mistress of Fossaway Manor. It would have been natural in him to say, “When you’re married I hope you’ll cure Harry of that nonsense,” but he had made no such reference. That was the strange thing about Dick, that he never even suggested or hinted of a coming time when she would be Countess of Chelford. In one way she was glad he did not--especially now. They wound slowly through the leafy lanes, passed a little wood, all olive, russet, and purple with the decay of autumn, and came to the station ten minutes ahead of time. “You have had no further visit from your Black Abbot?” she asked, as they strolled on to the station platform. He shook his head. “No; the police came last night to make inquiries. I don’t suppose it will go much farther. You read about it in the newspaper, of course?” She shook her head. “Servants talk,” she said. “I really don’t believe in this Black Abbot,” he went on. “It is queer that Harry is scared of this spook. He never goes outside the house when the old Abbot is reported in the neighbourhood.” “You don’t believe either?” He pursed his lips. “When I see a ghost I shall believe it. Until then I am politely sceptical.” As the train drew out of the station she put her head out of the window and looked back. He was standing stock still upon the platform where she had left him; and although she could not see his face, she felt that he was gazing after her, and thought she detected a certain tenseness in his very attitude--all of which was very pleasing to Miss Leslie Gwyn. X Strange as it may seem, she had never visited her brother’s office on High Holborn before she left her taxi at the door and came up in the elevator to his magnificent suite. Her appearance had a prosaic cause. She had left the country without a penny: a fact she did not realize till the ticket collector, working through the train, came into her compartment and aroused her from a daydream to the realization that she had neither ticket nor money to pay for it. She gave the man her card, and a taxi brought her to Holborn.