“May I know her address? I’m going down myself in a day or two, and perhaps I might venture to call?” said Gerard. Lady Jennings caught at the suggestion, and at once seizing a piece of paper from her writing-table, wrote down on it, with her gold-cased pencil, an address on the sea-front, where she said that Mrs. Davison was now living in rooms. She seemed quite eager to give him the address, and begged him to call again upon her when he returned to town, and to tell her how Rachel was, and her mother, and when the girl proposed to return to her. “Tell Rachel,” she said, “that she’s a naughty girl not to answer my letters, and that I am getting into a dreadful muddle with my own correspondence for want of her help.” Gerard rose, much pleased to have received this general invitation to call when he liked, but went away puzzled and vaguely uneasy. Lady Jennings, he thought, was quite anxious for him to go to Brighton to see Rachel. What new surprise would he find in store for him there? CHAPTER IV Gerard had made up his mind about the Brighton expedition even while he was talking to Lady Jennings. He was full of conflicting thoughts, hopes, and fears. On the one hand there was the assurance of a well-known and clever woman of the world like Lady Jennings that Rachel Davison was a charming girl, clever, high-principled, and generous to her family, amazingly industrious and dutiful to her people, but amazingly proud as well. And on the other hand there was the question of Lady Jennings as to “doubles,” which made him ask himself--what he had not dared ask her--whether she had herself fancied she met Rachel Davison in a strange disguise. And there was the old lady’s statement that Rachel, while at Brighton, never answered letters, and her evident anxiety for him to go down there and see for himself what the girl was doing. Of course there was nothing so very amazing in this fact of the disguise, if disguise it was, which he fancied he had seen Rachel wearing. If, as he had supposed possible, she went about as a workgirl to collect information or knowledge for literary or artistic work, it might well be that she would not tell Lady Jennings all the details of what she did in the way of her professional career. It seemed, indeed, as far as he could judge, as if this clever, independent young woman were rather a puzzle to her own friends, and as if they treated her with so much respect that they even condescended to allow her to keep her own secrets. But Gerard himself felt that he could not be thus content. Admiring Rachel Davison with an admiration which grew ever more perilous to his peace of mind as the mysterious circumstances connected with her made her more interesting, he felt that the one thing more important than anything else to him at that time was the solution of the mystery about her.