Mina, being sulky, would not talk to her uncle; she could not talk to Janie Iver; she did not see Harry, and would not have dared to talk to him if she had. But it need hardly be said that she was dying to talk to somebody. With such matters on hand, she struggled against silence like soda-water against the cork. Merely to stare down at Blent and wonder what was happening there whetted a curiosity it could not satisfy. She felt out of the game, and the feeling was intolerable. As a last resort, in a last effort to keep in touch with it, although she had been warned that she would find nothing of interest to her in the volume, she telegraphed to a bookseller in London to send her Mr. Cholderton's Journal. It came the day after it was published, four days after she had made Mr Neeld's acquaintance, and while Lady Tristram, contrary to expectation, still held death at arm's length and lay looking at her own picture. The next morning Neeld received a pressing invitation to go to tea at Merrion Lodge. Without a moment's hesitation he went; with him too all resolutions to know and to care nothing further about the matter vanished before the first chance of seeing more of it. And Mina had been Mina de Kries. She received him in the library; the Journal lay on the table. Something had restored animation to her manner and malice to her eyes; those who knew her well would have conjectured that she saw her way to making somebody uncomfortable. But there was also an underlying nervousness which seemed to hint at something beyond. She began by flattering her visitor outrageously and indulging in a number of false statements regarding her delight with the Journal and the amusement and instruction she had gained from it; she even professed to have mastered the Hygroxeric Method, observing that a note by the Editor put the whole thing in a nutshell. Much pleased, yet vaguely disappointed, Mr Neeld concluded that she had no more to say about the visit to Heidelberg. The Imp turned over the pages leisurely while Neeld sipped his tea. "I see you put little asterisk things where you leave out anything," she observed. "That's convenient, isn't it?" "I think it's usual," said he. "And another thing you do--Oh, you really are a splendid editor!--you put the date at the top of every page--even where Mr Cholderton's entry runs over ever so many pages. He is rather long sometimes, isn't he?" "I've always found the date at the top of the page a convenience in reading myself," said Mr Neeld. "Yes, it tells you just where you are--and where Mr Cholderton was." She laughed a little. "Yes, look here, page 365, May 1875, he's at Berlin! Then there are some asterisks"--Mr Neeld looked up from his tea--"and you turn over the page" (the Imp turned over with the air of a discoverer), "and you find him at Interlaken in--why, in August, Mr Neeld!" An amiable surprise appeared on her face. "Where was he in between?" she asked. "I--I suppose he stayed at Berlin."