The fact was that Max instantly connected this apparition of a woman "who asked questions about Mr. Horne" with the ugly story told him at the house by the wharf, and he was glad that Dudley was not spending Christmas at The Beeches. He was oppressed during the whole of his ride by this suggestion that the questionable characters of the wharfside were pursuing Dudley; it gave color to Carrie's statement that it was Dudley who killed the man whom Max believed to have been Edward Jacobs; and it looked as if the object of the woman's visit was to levy blackmail. Or was it--could it be that the woman was Carrie, and that her object was to warn Dudley? To associate Carrie herself with the levying of blackmail was not possible to the susceptible Max in the present state of his feelings toward her. And, just as he was meditating upon this mystery, all unprepared for a meeting with his sister, Doreen waylaid him. He was entering the house by the back way, muddy from his ride, when she sprang upon him from an ambush on the stairs. "I've been waiting all the morning to catch you alone," said she, as she ran out from behind the tall clock and seized his arm. "You've been trying to avoid me. Don't deny it. I say you have. As if it was any use! No, you shall not go upstairs and take off your boots first. You will just come into the study, mud and all, and tell me--tell me what you _know_, not what you have been making up, mind! I'm going to have the truth." "Well, you can't," returned her brother, shortly, as he allowed himself to be dragged across the hall, which looked cheerless enough without a fire, and with the great, clumsy, hideous, maimed old Yule log filling up the fireplace and reminding everybody of all that it had cost. Doreen pushed him into the study and shut the door. "Why can't I know the truth?" asked she, eying him steadily. "Do you mean that you have found out Dudley doesn't care for me." Max glanced at his sister's face, and then looked away. He had not known till that moment, when he caught the tender look of anxiety in her big brown eyes, how strong her love of Dudley was. An impulse of anger against the man seized him, and he frowned. "Why, surely you know already that he doesn't care for you, in the way he ought to care, or he would never have neglected you, never have given you up!" said he, ferociously. "I'm not so sure about that. At any rate I want to know what you found out. Don't think I'm not strong enough to bear it, whatever it is!" "Well, then, I'll tell you. He _is_ off his head. He has got mixed up in some way with a set of people no sane man would trust himself with for half an hour, and--and--and--well, they say--the people say he's done something that would hang him. There! Is that enough for you?"