“If I can help to bring about that end, Juanita, believe me that I will not shrink from the task; but at present I must own that I am off the track, and see no likelihood of succeeding where a trained detective has failed. Could I but find a shred of evidence to put me on the trail, I would pursue that clue to the bitter end; but so far all is dark.” “Yes, all is dark!” she answered, dejectedly; and then, after a pause, she said, “You are going to stay at Cheriton, I hear?” “I am to spend three days there at the turn of the year, just before I go back to London. I have chambers in Ferret-court, over the rooms in which your father spent the golden years of his youth, the years that made him a great man. It will be very interesting to me to hear him talk over those years, if I can beguile him into talking of himself, a subject which he so seldom dwells upon.” “Ask him if he ever made a bitter enemy. Ask him for his experience as a Judge at Assizes—find out, if you can, whether he ever provoked the hatred of a bad vindictive man.” “I will question your father, Juanita.” “Do! He will not let me talk to him about the one subject that occupies my mind. He always stops me on the threshold of any inquiries. He might surely help me to find the murderer, with his highly trained intellect, with his experience of the darkest side of human nature. But he will not help me. He would talk more freely to you, no doubt.” “I will sound him,” answered Theodore, and then he tried to beguile her into talking of other things—her home, her surroundings. “It must be a comfort to you to have Lady Jane.” “A comfort! She is all that I have of happiness—all that reminds me of Godfrey. My mother and father are very dear to me—I hope you believe that, Theodore?—but our lives are parted now. My mother is wrapped up in her husband. Neither of them can sympathize with me as _his_ mother can. Their loss is not the same as ours. We two are one in our grief.” “And she is a buffer between you and the outer world, I see. She bears the burdens that would weigh you down. Those children, for instance—no doubt they are charming, as children go; but I fancy they would worry you if you had too much of them.”