"Then I daresay you are tired. Give my love to your wife," added Miss Diana, as she wished Sir Karl good evening and turned into St. Jerome's again to watch over her niece Jemima. Sir Karl strode onwards. He had just come home from his interview with Mr. Burtenshaw. Miss Diana Moore and her sentiments had served to divert his mind for a moment from his own troubles, but they were soon all too present again. The hum of the voices and sound of the footsteps came back to him from the crowd, pursuing its busy way to the village: he was glad to keep on his own solitary course and lose its echo. Some one else, who had come out of St. Jerome's but who could not be said properly to pertain to the crowd, had kept on the solitary road--and that was Mr. Strange. He knew the others would take the direct way to the village and Mrs. Jinks's, and perhaps that was the reason why he did not. But there was no accounting for what Mr. Strange did: and one thing was certain--he had been in the habit lately of loitering in that solitary road a good deal after dusk had fallen, smoking his cigar there between whiles. Sir Karl went on. He had nearly reached the Maze, though he was on the opposite side, when at a bend of the road there suddenly turned upon him a man with a cigar in his mouth, the end of it glowing like an ember. The smoker would have turned his head away again, and passed on, but Sir Karl stopped. He had recognized him: and his mind had been made up on the way from London, to speak to this man. "I beg your pardon. Mr. Tatton, I think." Mr. Tatton might possibly have been slightly taken to at hearing himself addressed by his own name: but there was no symptom of it in his voice or manner. "The same, sir," he readily answered, taking the cigar from his mouth. "I wish to say a few words to you," pursued Sir Karl. "As well perhaps say them now as later." "Better, sir. No time like the present: it's all we can make sure of." "Perhaps you know me, Mr. Tatton?" "Sir Karl Andinnian--unless I am mistaken," replied the detective, throwing away his cigar. Sir Karl nodded, but made no assent in words. He would have given a portion of his remaining life to discern whether this man of law, whom he so dreaded, knew, or suspected, that he had not a right to the title. "I have just come from London," pursued Sir Karl. "I saw Mr. Burtenshaw there to-day. Finding that you were down here, I wished to ascertain whether or not you had come here in search of one Philip Salter. And I hear that it is so." The officer made no remark to this. It might be, that he was uncertain how far he might trust Sir Karl. The latter observed the reticence: guessed at the doubt. "We may speak together in perfect confidence, Mr. Tatton. But for me, you would not have been sent here at all. It was in consequence of a communication I made myself, that the suspicion as to Salter reached Scotland Yard."