In the firelight in a small room leading out of the large library, Dulcie and I sat and talked. Perched on the broad arm of a giant padded chair, swinging her small, grey-spatted feet to and fro, she glanced at me moodily, replying in monosyllables to most of my remarks. Presently I rose with a gesture of annoyance, and began to pace the floor. It was not a comfortable atmosphere by any means—metaphorically. In point of fact, Dulcie and I quarrelled. We had quarrelled during our afternoon walk over the hard-frozen snow to a neighbouring hamlet to take a deserving widow a can of soup, and old "Captain" Barnacle in Wheatsheaf Lane a promising Christmas pudding. The cause of our quarrel was a curious one. Though Aunt Hannah appeared to have overcome her belief concerning the telegram she had felt so certain I had sent, I felt that she was now prejudiced against me—why, heaven only knew. Her manner towards me, as well as her expression, and the way she spoke to me, all betrayed this. Women dislike being proved to be in the wrong even more than men do, and the conclusion I had come to was that Aunt Hannah would never forgive my having, in a sense, made her eat her words and look ridiculous. It was on the subject of Aunt Hannah, then, that Dulcie and I had begun our quarrel, for Dulcie had stood up for her when I condemned her—that I condemned her rather bitterly, I admit. From that we had presently come to talk of Mrs. Stapleton, for whom Dulcie had suddenly developed a most extraordinary infatuation. On the morning that Dick, on his way to the station, had passed Mrs. Stapleton in her car, Mrs. Stapleton had called at Holt and asked to see Dulcie. At that moment Dulcie was in the train with Aunt Hannah, on her way to London in response to the telegram. The widow had then asked to see Aunt Hannah Challoner, and then Sir Roland. Upon hearing that all three were absent from home, she had asked if she might come into the house to write a note to Dulcie, and the maid who had opened the door to her—the butler and footman having, as we know, gone into Newbury—had politely but firmly refused to admit her, declaring that she had orders to admit nobody whomsoever. This refusal had apparently annoyed Mrs. Stapleton a good deal, and on the same evening she had called again, and again asked to see Dulcie, who by that time had returned. It was while she was alone with Dulcie in her boudoir that Sir Roland and Dick and I had returned to Holt, and that the stranger—whom we now knew to have been Lord Logan's son—had been discovered in the hiding-hole. Mrs. Stapleton had remained with Dulcie over an hour, and during that hour it was that she had apparently cast the spell of her personality over Dulcie. It was on the subject of this infatuation of Dulcie's that Dulcie and I had ended by quarrelling rather seriously.