From that time Mrs. Chaffen looked curiously about her, poking and peering around whenever she had the opportunity. One morning in particular, when Mrs. Grey was asleep, and she saw Ann go out to answer the bell, and Hopley was safe at the end of the garden, for she could hear him rolling the path there, Mrs. Chaffen made use of the occasion. She went along the passage to the door where the gentleman had disappeared, and found herself in a dull sitting-room wainscoted with mahogany, its wide, modern window looking to the maze. Keenly Mrs. Chaffen's eyes darted about the room: but there was no other outlet that she could see. The dark paneling went from the door to the window, and from the window round to the door again. After that, she made her way into the small angular passages that the house seemed to abound in: two of them were bedrooms with the beds made up, the others seemed to be out of use. None of them were locked; the doors of most of them stood open; but certainly in not one of them was there any trace of a hidden gentleman. That same day when she had finished her dinner, brought up to her as usual, she hastily put the things together on the tray and darted off with it down stairs. Mrs. Grey feebly called to her; but the nurse, conveniently deaf, went on without hearing. The staircase was angular, the turnings were short, and Mrs. Chaffen, as she went through the last one, gave the tray an inadvertent knock against the wall. Its plates rattled, its glasses jingled, betraying their approach: and--if ever she had heard a bolt slipped in her life, she felt sure she heard one slipped inside the kitchen door. "It's me, Mrs. Hopley, with the tray," she called out, going boldly on. "Open the door." No answer. No signs of being heard. Everything seemed perfectly still. Mrs. Chaffen managed to lodge the tray against the door-post and hold it steady with one hand, while she tried the door with the other. But she could not open it. "Mrs. Hopley, it's me with the tray. Please open." It was opened then. Ann Hopley flung it wide and stood there staring, a saucepan in her hand. "What, have you brought the things down!" she exclaimed in a voice of surprise. "Why on earth couldn't you have let them be till I came up?" The nurse carried her tray onwards, and put it on the board under the window. At the table, not having been polite enough to his wife to take off his flapping straw hat in her presence, sat the gardener, munching his dinner as toothless people best can, his back to the light. "Why did you keep me waiting at the door?" asked the nurse, not pleased. "Did you wait?" returned Ann Hopley. "I was in the back place there, washing out the saucepans. You might have come in without knocking." "The door was bolted." "The door bolted!--not it," disputed Ann. "The latch has got a nasty trick of catching, though." "This is fine weather, Mr. Hopley!" said the nurse, leaving the point uncontested, and raising her voice.