"I really do," said the Colonel promptly, "strange as it may appear. In India I have seen too much of the Unseen to doubt. There are certain gifted people who can see and who can control forces of which the average person knows nothing. Oh, yes, I believe, and--but what's the use of talking? I can never make you believe, and I don't want to." Vernon shrugged his shoulders again and buttoned up his coat. "As you say, it doesn't matter," he answered. "However, Diabella has vanished with her two satellites, so there's nothing more to be done at present." "You give up the hunt?" "I said, at present. No. I shall lie quiet until Diabella reappears." "She won't, if she's wise." "She will--if she's daring, and I shrewdly suspect that she is." "Do you believe her to be this Spider?" "I do, and I don't. I really can't say. But if not the rose, she is near the rose. All I can assert with safety, Colonel, is that if we can lay hands on this witch in grain we'll learn who murdered poor Dimsdale." "God grant that." "Amen! to that pious prayer," was Vernon's reply as he left the room. Towton duly finished his letter of inquiry to Venery, of Singapore, and having posted it went cheerfully about his usual business of pleasure--that is, as cheerfully as a man in love well could do. At the Colonel's age love was rather a serious matter, since he had taken the disease badly, as is invariably the case with middle aged men. Some individuals constantly let their emotions trickle out to expend themselves in trifling love affairs, amusing for the moment; others dam up the passions for years until they burst through the barrier, to sweep everything before them irresistibly. Colonel Towton was one of the latter. But, not being entirely blinded by his late-born infatuation, he did not deem Ida perfection, as a hot-headed youth would have done, and he foresaw that, as Mrs. Towton, she would need guidance and firm control. Hitherto, for want of both, she had run wild; but the materials were there, out of which, as Towton put it to himself, he could build a model wife. That she was frivolous, rather than strong-minded, was a point in her favour, as the Colonel desired to mould wax rather than to hammer iron. So if Ida only consented to marry him he hoped for a calm and contented domestic existence, undisturbed by aggressive romance. And with his home-loving, self-controlled nature, Towton infinitely preferred the outlook from an unemotional point of view.