"Yes, it is that which troubles me," Pamela cried, in a low voice. "She was afraid. I would have given much to have doubted it. I could not; her eyes betrayed it, her face, her whole attitude. She was afraid." Mr. Mudge nodded his head, and went quietly on-- "And when she had recovered a little from her fear she questioned you closely as to the time when you first saw Stretton outside the house, and the time when he went away." He spoke with so much certitude that he might have been present at the interview. "I told her that it was some little time after eleven when he came, and that he only stayed a few minutes," answered Pamela. "And at that," rejoined Mr. Mudge, "Lady Stretton's anxiety diminished." "Yes, that is true, too," Pamela admitted; and she turned her face to him with its troubled appeal. "Why was she afraid? For, since you have guessed that she was, you must know the reason which she had for fear. Why was it so fortunate that Tony Stretton did not mount the steps of the house and ring the bell?" Mr. Mudge answered her immediately, and very quietly. "Because Lionel Callon was inside the house." A great sympathy made his voice gentle--sympathy for Pamela. None the less the words hurt her cruelly. She turned away from him so that he might not see her face, and stood gazing down the course through a mist. Bitter disappointment was hers at that moment. She was by nature a partisan. The thing which she did crept closer to her heart by the mere act of doing it. She knew it, and it was just her knowledge which had so long kept her to inaction. Now her thoughts were passionately set on saving Millie, and here came news to her which brought her to the brink of despair. She blamed Tony. "Why did he ever go away?" she cried. "Why, when he had come back, did he not stay?" And at once she saw the futility of her outcry. Tony, Millie, Lionel Callon--what was the use of blaming them? They acted as their characters impelled them. She had to do her best to remedy the evil which the clash of these three characters had produced. "What can be done?" she asked of herself. There was one course open certainly. She could summon Warrisden again, send him out a second time in search of Tony Stretton, and make him the bearer, not of an excuse, but of the whole truth. Only she dreaded the outcome; she shrank from telling Tony the truth, fearing that he would exaggerate it. "Can nothing be done?" she asked, again in despair, and this time she asked the question aloud, and turned to Mr. Mudge. Mudge had been quietly waiting for it. "Yes," he answered, "something can be done. I should not have told you, Miss Mardale, what I knew unless I had already hit upon a means to avert the peril; for I am aware how much my news must grieve you." Pamela looked at Mr. Mudge in surprise. It had not occurred to her at all that he could have solved the problem. "What can I do?" she asked. "You can leave the whole trouble in my hands for a few days."