Selwood was glad enough to put everything out of his mind; it seemed to him a hopeless task to search for a man to whose identity they only had the very faintest clue. But before noon of the next day--Sunday--he was face to face with a new phase of the problem. Since her uncle's death, Peggie had begun to show a quiet reliance on Selwood. It had come to be tacitly understood between them that he was to be in constant attendance on her for the present, at any rate. He spent all his time at the house in Portman Square; he saved its young mistress all the trouble he could; he accompanied her in her goings and comings. And of late he had taken to attending her to a certain neighbouring church, whereto Peggie, like a well-regulated young lady, was constant in her Sunday visits. There in the Herapath family pew, he and Peggie sat together on this particular Sunday morning, neither with any thought that the Herapath mystery had penetrated to their sacred surroundings. Selwood had been glad to take Cox-Raythwaite's advice and to put the thing out of his mind for thirty-six hours: Peggie had nothing in her mind but what was proper to the occasion. Jacob Herapath had been an old-fashioned man in many respects; one of his fads was an insistence upon having a family pew in the church which he attended, and in furnishing it with his own cushions, mats, and books. Consequently Peggie left her own prayer-book in that pew from Sunday to Sunday. She picked it up now, and opened it at the usual familiar place. And from that place immediately dropped a folded note. Had this communication been a _billet-doux_, Peggie could hardly have betrayed more alarm and confusion. For a moment she let the thing rest in the palm of her hand, holding the hand out towards Selwood at her side; then with trembling fingers she unfolded it in such a fashion that she and Selwood read it together. With astonished eyes and beating hearts they found themselves looking at a half-sheet of thin, foreign-looking notepaper, on which were two or three lines of typewriting: "If you wish to save your cousin Barthorpe's life, leave the church and speak to the lady whom you will find in a private automobile at the entrance to the churchyard." CHAPTER XXX THE WHITE-HAIRED LADY