She had a good figure, and she carried herself well, walking with a light springy step. She was dressed plainly in neat but evidently inexpensive clothes, such as were suitable to her class. If she had been attired in proper garments, she would have been taken for a young lady immediately. The thing that puzzled him most was her voice. She had addressed him as "young man," and there was a certain blunt insolence in her remarks which negatived the idea of refinement. But even if her speech had been absolutely vulgar, the voice was unmistakably high-bred and cultivated; in a word, the voice of a lady. How came it that Mr Strange's parlourmaid wore the clothes of a servant, and spoke in the tones of a highly educated young woman? It was one more mystery. Nothing daunted, he pursued the same tactics with the housemaid when he met her walking alone. She was a plain girl, evidently of a different class. At the start she was more civil, but after a minute or two, during which she had given the briefest answers to his ingratiating questions, she had turned upon him like the other, only in a less hostile manner, and explained to him that she did not desire either his conversation or his company. She was a little more polite than the parlourmaid, but that was all. She addressed him respectfully but firmly. "Excuse me, sir, but if it's the same to you, I'd rather walk alone. I'm not fond of making the acquaintance of gentlemen I know nothing about." Poor Varney felt he was not a success with the fair sex. Or did they suspect him? A further piece of information, however, he got from his friend the postman. He had asked Wingate and Sheila to occasionally put a blank sheet of paper in an envelope, and address it to him under the name of Franks, to keep up appearances. He met the man one morning outside Forest View and asked if there were any letters for him. "None by this post, sir. Never had such a light round. This is the last; it's for Mr Gregory, at Forest View, the gentleman what's staying there." So Gregory was the name of the invalid, who kept so closely to the house. But Gregory, no doubt, was an assumed name, like Stent alias Strange. CHAPTER FOURTEEN. THE CIPHER OF THE TWO C'S. "I am going to ask you a question, dearest; I fear it is a painful one, but I think it ought to be put." It was Austin Wingate who spoke. He had dined with Sheila at Chesterfield Street, and after dinner the lovers had gone to her own sitting-room, which was on the first floor. She looked at him steadfastly. "Painful or not, Austin, please put it. You would not hurt me, I know, unless you felt it was absolutely necessary." "Of course not, Sheila," answered the young man fervently. "In our anxiety to solve this mystery concerning your father we must shrink from nothing. The question I am going to ask you, dear, is this: Have you ever had any cause to suspect there was some hidden mystery in your father's life? Do not be offended--will you?"