“You’re a good detective,” said he, smiling again. “You don’t miss any of the points. It was a bit of a problem, how to send the thing; but I had the luck to find some people I knew who were coming over here, and they brought it. So that’s that!” “An emerald!” said Lexy. “This is almost too much! I think I’ll say good night, Captain Grey. I need sleep.” As she followed Mrs. Royce up the stairs, she saw Captain Grey still sitting before the fire, smoking; and it was a comforting sight. X Lexy slept late the next morning. It was nearly nine o’clock when she opened her eyes. She lay for a few minutes, looking about her. The gray light of another rainy day filled the neat, unfamiliar little room, and outside the window she could see the branches of a little pear tree rocking in the wind. “I’m here in Wyngate,” she said to herself. “I was bent on coming here to find Caroline; and now, here I am, and how am I going to begin?” She got up, and washed in cold water, in a queer, old-fashioned china basin painted with flowers. She brushed her shining hair, and dressed, feeling more hopeful every minute. “One step at a time!” she thought. “The first step was to come here; and the next step—well, I’ll think of it after breakfast. Perhaps Captain Grey will have thought of something.” But Captain Grey had gone out. “Jest a few minutes ago,” Mrs. Royce informed her. “He was down real early—around seven, and he waited and waited for you. At half past eight he et, and off he went.” “Did he say when he’d be back?” “No,” said Mrs. Royce. “He didn’t say much of anything. He’s a kind of quiet young man, ain’t he? Well, he’d ought to get on with his sister, then.” “Is she very quiet?” asked Lexy. “Quiet!” repeated Mrs. Royce. “Set down an’ begin to eat, Miss Moran. I’ve fixed a real nice tasty breakfast for you, if I do say it as shouldn’t. Corn gems, too. Mis’ Quelton quiet? I should say she was! Quiet as”—she paused—“as the dead,” she went on, and the phrase made an unpleasant impression upon Lexy. “An’ her husband, too. I never saw the like of them. They never come into the village, an’ nobody ever goes out there to the Tower. About twice a week the doctor drives into Lymewell—the town below here—and he buys a lot of food an’ all, an’ he goes home. I can see him out of my front winder, an’ the sight of him, driving along in that black buggy of his—it gives me the shivers!” “But if he’s a doctor—” “Don’t ask _me_ what kind of doctor he is, Miss Moran! He don’t go to see the sick—that’s all I know.” “But his wife—what is she like?” “Miss Moran,” said the landlady, with profound impressiveness, “I guess there ain’t three people in Wyngate that’s ever set eyes on her!” “But how awfully queer!” “You may well say ‘queer,’” said Mrs. Royce. “There she stays, out in that lonely place—never seeing a soul from one month’s end to another. She’s a young woman, too—young, an’ just as pretty as a picture.” “Then you are—”