t suspicions, to find him still in the
daze of that unimaginable thought, battling with it, scoffing at it,
succumbing to it and all without a word. Mr. Challoner was without clew
to this struggle, but the might of it and the mystery of it, drove him
in extreme agitation from the room. Though proof was lacking, though
proof might never come, nothing could ever alter his belief from this
moment on that Doris was right in her estimate of this man's guilt,
however unsubstantial her reasoning might appear.

How far he might have been carried by this new conviction; whether
he would have left the house without seeing Doris again or exchanging
another word with the man whose very presence stifled him, he had
no opportunity to show, for before he had taken another step, he
encountered the hurrying figure of Doris, who was returning to her
guests with an air of marked relief.

"He does not know that you are here," she whispered to Mr. Challoner,
as she passed him. Then, as she again confronted Orlando who hastened
to dismiss his trouble at her approach, she said quite gaily, "Mr.
Brotherson heard your voice, and is glad to know that you're here. He
bade me give you this key and say that you would have found things in
better shape if he had been in condition to superintend the removal of
the boxes to the place he had prepared for you before he became ill.
I was the one to do that," she added, controlling her aversion with
manifest effort. "When Mr. Brotherson came to himself he asked if I had
heard about any large boxes having arrived at the station shipped to
his name. I said that several notices of such had come to the house.
At which he requested me to see that they were carried at once to the
strange looking shed he had had put up for him in the woods. I thought
that they were for him, and I saw to the thing myself. Two or three
others have come since and been taken to the same place. I think you
will find nothing broken or disturbed; Mr. Brotherson's wishes are
usually respected."

"That is fortunate for me," was the courteous reply.

But Orlando Brotherson was not himself, not at all himself as he bowed
a formal adieu and past the drawn-up sentinel-like figure of Mr.
Challoner, without a motion on his part or on the part of that gentleman
to lighten an exit which had something in it of doom and dread presage.

XXX. CHAOS

It is not difficult to understand Mr. Challoner's feelings or even
those of Doris at th