had seen him from the window of her room, driving past the rectory
in the direction of the Secret House, and he found her expectantly
waiting him in the drawing-room.

He came straight to the heart of the matter.

"I have just been to visit a man who I understand is a friend of yours,"
he said.

She inclined her head.

"You mean Mr. Moole?"

"That is the man," said the cheerful T. B.

She thought for a long time before she spoke again. She was evidently
making up her mind as to how much she would tell this insistent officer
of the law.

"I suppose you might as well know the whole facts of the case," she
said; "if you will sit over there, I will supplement the information I
gave you in Brakely Square a few days ago."

T. B. seated himself.

"I am certainly a visitor to the Secret House," she said, after a while.
She did not look at the detective as she spoke, but kept her gaze fixed
upon the window and the garden without.

"I told you that I have had one love affair in my life; that affair,"
she went on steadily, "was with George Doughton; you probably know his
son."

T. B. nodded.

"It was a case of love at first sight. George Doughton was a widower, a
good-natured, easy-going, lovable man. He was a brave and brilliant man
too, famous as an explorer as you know. I met him first in London; he
introduced me to the late Mr. Farrington, who was a friend of his, and
when Mr. Farrington came to Great Bradley and took a house here for the
summer, George Doughton came down as his guest, and I got to know him
better than ever I had known any human being before in my life."

She hesitated again.

"We were lovers," she went on, defiantly,--"why should I not confess to
an experience of which I am proud?--and our marriage was to have taken
place on the very day he sailed for West Africa. George Doughton was the
very soul of honour, a man to whom the breath of scandal was as a desert
wind, withering and terrible. He was never in sympathy with the modern
spirit of our type, was old-fashioned in some respects, had an immense
and beautiful conception of women and their purity, and carried his
prejudices against, what we call smart society, to such an extent that,
if a man or woman of his set was divorced in circumstances discreditable
to themselves, he would cut them out of his life."

Her voice faltered, and she seemed to find difficulty in continuing, but
she braced herself to it.

"I had been divorced," she wen