"It is not to be called a home, Dora," answered her husband, with a touch of impatience. "A business man's life has only one aspect--hard work. However, if you want to see the offices in which a money-grubber toiled, you shall be gratified. The street is not very far off. Will you walk there with us?" he added, turning to Heathcote. "Gladly. I am a free man to-day." "Indeed! Then your criminal investigation, your amateur-detective work is at a standstill for the moment, I conclude?" said Wyllard, with an ill-concealed sneer. "For the moment, yes," answered the other quietly. "And you have made some startling discoveries, no doubt, since you crossed the Channel?" "Yes, my discoveries have been startling; but as they relate to the remote past, rather than to the period of that poor girl's death, they are of no particular value at present." "The remote past? What do you mean by that?" asked Wyllard. "Ten years ago." "May we ask the nature of these discoveries?" "I'd rather tell you nothing at present. My knowledge is altogether fragmentary. Directly I have reduced it to a definite form--directly I have a clear and consecutive story to tell--you and Mrs. Wyllard shall hear that story. In the mean time I had rather not talk about the case." "You have all the professional reticence. And I see that you and Distin are working together," said Wyllard. "How do you mean?" "We saw your advertisement in yesterday's _Times"_. "How did you know that I had inserted that advertisement?" "The girl's name was conclusive--Léonie Lemarque: that was the name of the girl who was killed." "Yes. But I did not think it was known to any one except Distin and myself." "You mentioned the name in your letter to me," said Dora. "Did I really? Then it was unconsciously. I meant to have told nothing till I could tell the whole story." CHAPTER IV. THE HOME OF THE PAST. Mr. and Mrs. Wyllard and Heathcote walked on together to a quiet street near the Madeleine, a street of offices and wholesale traders. The house in which Mr. Wyllard had occupied the ground floor was one of the best in the street, a large stone-fronted house, with a high doorway and carved columns--not so richly decorated as those palatial dwellings of Haussmannised Paris, built during the Second Empire, but a handsome and somewhat florid style of house notwithstanding. It stood at the corner of a narrow court, leading no one cared where. Doubtless to some obscure slum in which the working classes had one of their nooks--those hidden colonies which lurk here and there behind the palaces of great cities.