Levy, the scoundrel who had purchased Rona, argued that young Vanston was a gentleman, and had relatives who would make an effort to find him. Let them do this. If they found him, ten to one they found her. Money and time would be saved to himself and Rankin Leigh. They could remain in the background, and reap the benefit of anything the police discovered. As to what had actually happened they themselves were in a state of uncertainty. The window of Felix's room had been found fastened on the inside. Nobody had seen the two or either of them leave the house. The door of the room wherein the girl had been confined was locked. There were no traces of her having fallen out of the window, though this must have been her way of escape. But had she thrown herself out she must have been killed or seriously injured; and of her having lowered herself by a rope or any other means there was no trace. Their exhaustive inquiry into accident cases at adjacent hospitals had led to nothing. A young man could not have carried off a badly injured girl without attracting notice. Had she fallen upon the railway lines her body would certainly have been found. The morning papers all published the curious story of the disappearance of a suicide. They printed in full the two letters--that of Denzil to Felix; that of Felix to Denzil. The evening papers even had leading articles arguing as to whether the elder brother had or had not behaved with harshness to the younger. No information was forthcoming as to where Felix had spent the last few hours of his life. For the newspapers did not know, and the police did not know, that all-important fact, which would have meant so much to Denzil and his aunt, that there had been two suicides, and not only one. And Comrade Dawkes was not one to court publicity. If the crew of the _George Barnes_ had but known the story of the girl who dropped out of the window! But they did not know it. So in London the police searched, and Denzil advertised, and Levy and Rankin Leigh waited for the upshot of it all. But nothing happened. No body was discovered in the Thames; no young man under the influence of laudanum was to be found in any police-station or hospital. The invitations for the house-party at Normansgrave were not dispatched. The Squire retired in bitterness of spirit to his study, where he sat up half the night, and departed to London next morning by an early train. And down in the cottage hospital at Aylfleet lay Veronica Leigh, for two days delirious, for two or three days more weak and hardly conscious; and then, again, for some days slowly gaining strength and grip on life.