The Captain having located himself at the best hotel, and partaken of a dinner such as had been altogether beyond his means for a long time past, proceeded to take a quiet stroll about the little town, which, however, had nothing of interest to offer for his inspection. Later on he found his way into the coffee-room of the hotel, which place, as he had expected it would, drew to itself in the course of the evening a round dozen or more of the better class of tradespeople and others, all of whom, it was evident, were in the habit of frequently meeting there. Here he found no difficulty in ascertaining everything about Sir Gilbert that it concerned him to know. Thus, he learnt that Sir Gilbert’s son by his first marriage had left England, after a quarrel with his father, more than twenty years before, and that, a few years later, news had come to hand that he had lost his life through some accident abroad, only, nobody seemed to know either the nature of the accident in question, or where it had happened. Further, the Captain learnt that the second Lady Clare and her three sons were all dead, and that Sir Gilbert, a broken, childless old man of seventy-four, was living at the Chase in a seclusion that was rarely broken by any visitor from the outside world. It was on a Friday that the Captain went down to Mapleford, and the following Monday saw him back in town. He had stayed in the country over Sunday in order that he might be present at morning service at the church, just beyond the precincts of the Chase, which Sir Gilbert made a point of attending, and where several generations of his progenitors were buried. The Captain wanted to see for himself what kind of man Sir Gilbert was. The latter arrived in due course, alone and on foot, and from the place where he sat Verinder had an unimpeded view of him. When service was over the Captain took a stroll round the church, pausing to look at every monument and to read every inscription commemorative of dead and gone members of the Clare family. One inscription, and one only, had any special interest for him. It was that which recorded the death of “John Alexander Clare, eldest son of Sir Gilbert Clare, who was accidentally killed abroad” on such and such a date. “I would wager a hundred pound note to a fiver—if I had one,” said the Captain with emphasis, “that this tablet refers to Vanna’s husband and to no one else. It’s altogether out of the question that there should have been two John Alexander Clares living at the same time. And to think that the young man has been dead for seventeen years and that his widow has known nothing about it? What a fortunate thing it is for her that she has got a man of the world like me at her back! From this day forward her interests and mine are identical.” A jubilant man was Captain Verinder when he went back to London next day.