down the neck of her frock.... Stealing? She repulsed the idea
with violent disdain. What she had accomplished against her father was not
a crime, but a vengeance.... She would never be found in London. It was
impossible. Her plan seemed to her to be perfect in each detail, except
one. She was not the right sort of girl to execute it. She was very shy.
She suspected that no other girl could really be as shy as she was. She
recalled dreadful rare moments with her mother in strange drawing-rooms.
Still, she would execute the plan even if she died of fright. A force
within her would compel her to execute it. This force did not make for
happiness; on the contrary, it uncomfortably scared her; but it was
irresistible.

Something on the brow of the road from Colchester attracted her attention.
It was a handcart, pushed by a labourer and by Police Inspector Keeble,
whom she liked. Following the handcart over the brow came a loose
procession of villagers, which included no children, because the children
were in school. Except on a Sunday Audrey had never before seen a
procession of villagers, and these villagers must have been collected out
of the fields, for the procession was going in the direction of, and not
away from, the village. The handcart was covered with a tarpaulin.... She
knew what had happened; she knew infallibly. Skirting the boundary of the
grounds, she reached the main entrance to Flank Hall thirty seconds before
the handcart. The little dog, delighted in a new adventure, yapped
ecstatically at her heels, and then bounded onwards to meet the Inspector
and the handcart.

"Run and tell yer mother, Miss Moze," Inspector Keeble called out in a
carrying whisper. "There's been an accident. He ditched the car near
Ardleigh cross-roads, trying to avoid some fowls."

Mr. Moze, hurrying too fast to meet the Bishop of Colchester, had met a
greater than the Bishop.

Audrey glanced an instant with a sick qualm at the outlines of the shape
beneath the tarpaulin, and ran.

In the dining-room, over the speck of fire, Mrs. Moze and Miss Ingate were
locked in a deep intimate gossip.

"Mother!" cried Audrey, and then sank like a sack.

"Why! The little thing's fainted!" Miss Ingate exclaimed in a voice
suddenly hoarse.

CHAPTER III

THE LEGACY

Audrey and Miss Ingate were in the late Mathew Moze's study, fascinated--as
much unconsciously as consciously--by the thing which since its owner's
death had grown eve