He mentioned in a letter that he had been to a music-hall entertainment where to his amazement the sphinx-like young person, who was a paragon of all the virtues, was playing accompaniments for the members of a musical troupe, to which she apparently belonged. "I understood she was fostering the Arnott babies," he wrote. "You don't keep me fully posted as to events, as you promised. I tried to get hold of her, but learnt that she had gone on to Pretoria. It is an odd life for a girl, but more amusing, possibly, than tending the future generation." Further on in the letter he said: "I ran across Arnott in town--another surprise. He was very surly, and seemed to wish to avoid me, so I reconsidered my hospitable intention to ask him to lunch with me. How is She? If you don't mention Her in your next letter I shall run down and pursue my own inquiries." Mrs Carruthers was highly perplexed. Why, she wondered, if Blanche had gone away with Arnott should she have joined a troupe of strolling singers? And if she had not gone away with Arnott, why was he in Johannesburg at the same time? Carruthers could not explain this also as a coincidence. He did not attempt to. He remarked that it looked fishy, and asked his wife if she intended to inform Pamela. Mrs Carruthers was undecided. "I don't know what to do," she confessed. "I think I'll write to George, and tell him to find out what he can about them. It will be necessary to explain certain things to him; I am sorry to be obliged to do that." "Why?" inquired Carruthers. She looked at him for a moment uncertainly. Dickie was a well-meaning person, but he was not astute. She possessed a beautiful contempt for his perspicacity. "George admires Pamela," she said. Carruthers received this intelligence unmoved. "He would be a little unusual if he didn't," he returned. "I don't see why that fact should make you hesitate to enlist his services; it's much more likely to make him of use. Dare is cut out for the role of knight to distressed beauty; it suits his proportions; a stout man looks absurd in the cast." Mrs Carruthers showed impatience. "If you can't help, don't make fatuous remarks," she said. "George takes it too seriously. We don't want to complicate the present muddle. If I felt that he might make a fool of himself over this business I would sooner bite out my tongue than inform him." "Then we aren't any forrader," Carruthers returned imperturbably, "except that we have a clue to Arnott's whereabouts, which in my opinion you have no right to keep from his wife." "We don't know positively that she isn't fully informed," she replied.