ut I shall wait for
her--she must come in before dinner.' Aunt Sarah looked hard at him.
'They'll probably know where she's gone if she is out. You could go and
meet her,' she said to him. I can't give you the way they talked--it was
all as if what they said meant something different, or something more,
at any rate. When Aunt Sarah suggested that he might go and meet Miss
Driver, he started a little, then thought it over. At last he said, 'I
shall try to find her to-night.' 'You're sensible at last!' she
said--and added something in a whisper. My father nodded, and walked out
of the room, pocketing his letter. Aunt Sarah went to the fire and
burned hers. I wish I could have got a look at it!"

"So do I," I said. "It's just on seven now."

I was thinking hard. The boy with the red cap--Powers's boy--the
note--the subterranean quarrel over it--the strange half-spoken
half-suppressed conversation that followed--these gave plenty of matter
for thought when I added to them my sore doubts of the way in which
Jenny in truth meant to spend the evening.

"Of course it may be all nothing. I'm afraid all the time of being
infernally officious."

"Your father will pretty nearly be at Breysgate by now."

"And she's there, I suppose, isn't she?" His question was full of
hesitation.

In an instant, on his question, my doubts and suspicions seemed to
harden into certainties. I knew--it was nothing less than
knowledge--that she was not there, and that the note brought by the boy
with the red cap told truly where she was. Fillingford would go to
Breysgate--he would be referred to Chat. Chat would tell him that Jenny
was in bed. Would he believe it and go home peacefully--to face Lady
Sarah's angry scorn and the doubts of his own perplexed mind? He
might--then all would be well. But he might not believe it. He had said
that he would try to find her to-night. He knew where to find her--if he
trusted the information which the boy in the red cap had brought.

"He doesn't know you've come here, of course?"

"Not he! I got a start--and, by Jove, I ran! Are you going to do
anything about it?"

I was quite clear what I had to do about it. Chat must be in the secret;
she might manage to send Fillingford home--or she might keep him at
Breysgate long enough to give me, in my turn, a chance. No good lay in
my going to meet him--Chat could lie as well as I, and, if he would not
believe her, he would not believe me either. Neither would I s