first volume might augment
it and give the clue to the woman's identity. Sir Charles hunted
desperately through the shelves. Nowhere was the first volume to be
found. He wasted half-an-hour before he understood why. Of course the
other volume would be in the woman's keeping, and how in the world to
discover her?

Things moved very quickly with Sir Charles that afternoon. He had shut
up the volume and laid it on the table, the while he climbed up and
down the library steps. From the top of the steps he glanced about the
room in a despairing way, and his eyes lit upon the table. For the
first time he remarked the binding which was of a brown leather. But
all the books on the shelves were bound uniformly in marble boards
with a red backing. He sprang down from the steps with the vigour of a
boy, and seizing the book looked in the fly leaf for a name. There was
a name, the name of a bookseller in Leamington, and as he closed the
book again, some one rapped upon the door. Sir Charles opened it and
saw Mr. Mardale. He gave the old gentleman no time to speak.

"Mr. Mardale," said he, "I am a man of plethoric habits, and must
needs take exercise. Can you lend me a horse?"

Mr. Mardale was disappointed as his manner showed. He had perhaps at
that very moment hit upon a new and most revolutionary invention.
But his manners hindered him from showing more than a trace of
the disappointment, and Sir Charles rode out to the bookseller at
Leamington, with the volume beneath his coat.

"Can you show me the companion to this?" said he, dumping it down upon
the counter. The bookseller seized upon the volume and fondled it.

"It is not fair," he cried. "In any other affair but books, it would
be called at once sheer dishonesty. Here have been my subscribers
clamouring for the Memoirs for six months and more."

"You hire out your books!" cried Sir Charles.

"Give would be the properer word," grumbled the man.

Sir Charles humbly apologised.

"It was the purest oversight," said he, "and I will gladly pay double.
But I need the first volume."

"The first volume, Sir," replied the bookseller in a mollified voice,
"is in the like case with the second. There has been an oversight."

"But who has it?"

The bookseller was with difficulty persuaded to search his list. He
kept his papers in the greatest disorder, so that it was no wonder
people kept his volumes until they forgot them. But in the end he
found his list.

"Mrs. Ripley