The corridor was spacious. It ran along two sides of the house, and most of the bed chambers opened from it. Mr. Castlemaine's study was the middle room in the side corridor; Madame's bedroom was nearly opposite the room; the one beyond hers being Harry Castlemaine's. Standing outside her door, in the still silence, with a flushed face and panting breath, not liking the work she was about to do, but believing it a necessity thrown upon her, she at length softly crossed the corridor and opened the outer door leading to the study. A short, dark, narrow passage not much more than a yard in length, and there was another door. This was locked, but the key was in it; she turned the key, and entered the room. Entered it with some undefined feeling of disappointment, for it was bare and empty. We are all apt to form ideas of places and things as yet unseen. The picture of Mr. Castlemaine's study, in the mind of Charlotte Guise, had been of a spacious apartment filled with furniture, and littered with papers. What she saw was a small square room, and no earthly thing in it, papers or else, but two tables, some chairs, and a bureau against the wall: or what would have been called in her own land a large secretaire, or office desk. She gazed around her with a blank face. The tables and chairs were bare: no opportunity there for anything concealed. The bureau was locked. She tried it; palled it, pushed it: but the closed-down lid was firm as adamant. "If there exists any record of him, it is in here," she said, half aloud. "I must contrive means of opening it." She could not do that to-day. It would have to be done with a false key, she supposed; and, that, she had not in her possession. Before quitting the room, she approached the window, and looked forth cautiously. At the sea rolling in the distance; at the Friars' Keep opposite; at the fair green lands lying between that and Greylands' Rest. Charlotte Guise shuddered at a thought that crossed her. "If he did indeed kill my poor husband and has laid him to rest in the Friars' Keep, how can he bear to be in this room, with that building in front of him to remind him of the deed?" The day was before her: it was not yet twelve o'clock. Blankly disappointed with her failure, she put on her things to go abroad: there was nothing to stay in for. At the last moment a thought struck her that she would go to Stilborough. She wanted to make some purchases; for the wardrobe brought over from France had not been extensive, either for herself or child. Hastily attiring herself, she told Miles she should not be in to dinner, and started.