Udal fetched a capon and a bottle of canary from the larder, and together we made short work of the meal. For, in truth, I was no less famished than Elmscott, though it needed his appetite to remind me of the fact. Meanwhile, I related in what manner Marston had escaped me, and handed him the letter which the servant had delivered to me in the Lincoln's Inn Fields. "In a bale of carpets!" cried Elmscott, with a fit of laughter which promised to choke him. "Gadsbud, but the fellow deserves to win! Well wrapped up! Morrice, Morrice, I fear me he'll trip up your heels!" Elmscott's hilarity, it may easily be understood, had little in it which could commend it to me, and I asked him abruptly by what means he had discovered that the Countess Lukstein was visiting in Bristol. "I'll tell you that as we go," said he, with a mouth full of capon. "At present I have but one object, to fill my stomach." After we had set forth, which we did a short while before midnight--for I heard a clock tell that hour as we rode through the village of Knightsbridge--he explained how the conjecture had grown up in his mind. "Marston came to you in the early morning, a week after the Countess had left London. He was muddied and soiled, as though he had ridden hard all night. In fact, he told you as much himself, and gave you the reason: that he had been fighting out his battle with himself. I reasoned, therefore, that he had only heard of this secret, whatever it may be, which put you at his mercy, the evening before. Now that information came from his sister. It concerned Countess Lukstein. Lady Tracy, you told me, for some reason feared the Countess. I argued then that it could only be this fear which made her write to her brother. But then she had been in England a month already. How was it that she had not revealed her anxiety before? And further, how was it that Marston knew what you and every one else was ignorant of--where Countess Lukstein was staying? Lady Tracy, I was aware, had gone down to the family estate near Bristol; and I inferred in consequence that she had seen the Countess in the neighbourhood, that her alarm had been increased by the sight, and that she had promptly communicated her fears to her brother; which fears Marston made use of as a weapon against you. The period of Countess Lukstein's departure jumped most aptly with my conjecture, and I thought it would be worth while to ride to Bristol and discover the truth." The notion seemed to me, upon his recounting it, so reasonable and clear that I wondered why it had never occurred to me, and expressed as much to Elmscott. He laughed in reply. "A man in love," said he, "is ever a damned fool. He smothers his mind in a petticoat."