"Quite so. But who else could have placed the eye on the drawing-room table, my dearest? I suspected Giles; I suspected you; and, I think, in a way, I suspected Striver, since he was working in the garden. Now I am sure. He put it there, because he was unable to read the cipher and so made use of it to implicate you. Miss Destiny found it and probably now it is in her possession. That glass eye has a trick of disappearing." "The Disappearing Eye," said Gertrude, with a wan smile, "but you are wrong about Aunt Julia, Cyrus. She was with me all the time when you saw the eye, and I walked with her to the gate myself. We were not in the drawing-room." I was disappointed when I heard this. "In that case, she could not have taken it," I mused. "Mr. Monk, could not, as he was with me all the time." "Cyrus, how can you think that papa would do such a thing?" I smiled covertly. My experience of Mr. Monk showed me that he could act in an extremely underhanded and mean way when it suited his own tricky ends to do so. But, bearing my promise in mind, I did not dare to explain myself to the girl. I merely said that perhaps, after all, Striver took the eye back again, as he had every opportunity of doing so. "But he would have produced it when we talked," insisted Gertrude again. "No. That would incriminate him too deeply. However, this eye, as I have said, seems to have a trick of appearing and disappearing, so it will turn up again. Meanwhile we will give Mr. Striver the benefit of the doubt and assume him to be innocent, although I'm hanged if his actions look like it. He won't say anything, you may depend upon that." Striver did not, and evidently my policy of daring him to do his worst had proved successful. He remained a week in Burwain, but did not come near the house. Then he disappeared. Mrs. Gilfin told me the news. Striver had given his cottage into the charge of some cousin and had gone away for an indefinite period. "Didn't say where he was going," chatted Mrs. Gilfin. "I asked John to find out from the gossip in the bar, but he couldn't. But, knowing men as I do, I know where he's gone." "Where, Cuckoo?" I asked anxiously, for, bearing in mind what the gardener knew, I was eager to know his whereabouts. "To London town," said Mrs. Gilfin solemnly, "young men with money always go there to have a spree. And since you've caught the eye of Miss Gertrude, Master Cyrus, dear, that young man's given up trying. With his aunt's money he's gone to enjoy himself." I doubted it. Striver was too deeply in love to get rid of his crazy passion so easily. Still it was possible that he had gone to London to drown his disappointment in an orgy, so I took the news of his departure to Gertrude, although I did not tell her of Mrs. Gilfin's belief. I found the girl puzzling over a letter from her father.