“The whole thing has only served to strengthen the belief expressed nearer the beginning of this letter, and I no longer feel the slightest qualms of conscience on his behalf. Nor do I feel much further uneasiness about you. Wear is dead. Mr. Lyon is dead. Clement Corney is dead. The carefully-prepared proofs against you which Hilton Riddell consigned to the waves have perished in a more deadly element, and he himself is powerless to do you further injury unless the sea gives up its dead. All things taken together, therefore, you may consider yourself perfectly safe, and I do not think there would be the slightest risk in your returning to England, and resuming your duties at the shop. Let me know as soon as possible whether you intend to do so or not. You will have had sufficient holiday, and ought to try to make up for all the worry you have caused me lately. “One thing puzzles me a little. How did Hilton Riddell get to know that you were sailing in the ‘Merry Maid,’ and what led him to pitch his suspicions on you? It couldn’t be all chance, and, but for his timely extinction things might have been very awkward for you by this time. “But enough of this subject. You know all there is to know, and I know as much as I want to know. Nor do I desire ever to open the subject again. “You will be interested to hear that Mr. Leonard Claridge is violently in love with Ada, and is very anxious to marry her off-hand. I am just as anxious that the marriage should take place as he is, for it would be a great thing to have Ada so advantageously settled. She pretends to turn her nose up at an offer from a grocer. But she is a very sensible girl, after all, and will reflect that if Mr. Claridge is a grocer he is not in the retail line, and will be able to provide her with an establishment quite equal to her mother’s. “Fanny is likely to be much more troublesome to us. She is very passionate and intractable, and nobody seems able to manage her since the night you left home. That night was also the one on which Wear came to such a sudden and tragic end. It was also the night on which that governess disappeared, who seemed to have such a genius for managing Fanny. When I returned home, after seeing you safe on board the ‘Merry Maid,’ the governess had gone out. It was odd that she never came back, wasn’t it?” Yes, it was certainly odd. Indeed, it was the one fly in Mr. Stavanger’s ointment. Just now the fact did not trouble him, because he was not aware of it.