"The manservant, having raked together the dying embers in the grate, is on the point of leaving the room, when the same lady who had put out the candle holds up her hand, covered with a black lace mitten, to arrest him. 'You may take her away,' she says, evidently alluding to me. 'I have no wish ever to see her again.' With that, the man leads me by the hand from the room, and with the shutting of the door everything becomes a blank again. "Next I am in bed, where I am awakened by a kiss on my forehead. I open two sleepy eyes, to see for a moment a tall figure in white stealing from the room with a night-light in her hand. I do not see her face, but something tells me it is one of the two ladies whom I saw in the panelled room, but not the one who ordered me to be taken away. "Such, dear Clement, are the particulars of three scenes which live more vividly in my memory than any others of a date prior to my passing into the charge of Uncle John and Aunt Charlotte. I fail to see how they can prove of the slightest service to you in the quest you have undertaken for the sake of one who can but wish herself more worthy of so much love and devotion." _Clement Hazeldine to Hermia Rivers_. "You were altogether wrong, dearest, in assuming that the particulars which I received from you three days ago would prove of no service to me, as shall now be demonstrated to you. "All along--that is to say, from the time I became aware that Mr. Hodgson had been practising in Stavering for considerably more than a quarter of a century--the probability has seemed to me that the person or persons who employed him as their agent in your case would be found, if found at all, no great distance away from this place. In any case, and more especially after the receipt of your letter, I determined to make Stavering the centre of a systematic process of search and inquiry, which I at once proceeded to put in execution. 'But a search for what?' I seem to hear you asking. You shall now be told. "The first thing I did was to hire a dog-cart, and in addition secure the services of a driver who knew every road and lane for a dozen miles round Stavering. Thus equipped, I began my quest. The object I set before me first of all was to find a pair of old-fashioned lodge gates, one of the pillars of which was surmounted by a griffin rampant, or other heraldic monstrosity, supporting a broken shield, but minus one of its paws. For two days I scoured the country roads and byeways, but to no purpose. Plenty of lodge gates I saw, surmounted, some of them, by one or another design in stone or stucco, but nowhere the particular one I was in search of. This morning, however, I was more fortunate.