he coffee-room of the hotel, as it grew late in the evening, became a
perfect solitude. I was left to reflect on what I had accomplished
that afternoon as uninterruptedly as if the house had been my own.
Before I retired to rest I had attentively thought over my
extraordinary interview with Mrs. Catherick from beginning to end, and
had verified at my leisure the conclusions which I had hastily drawn in
the earlier part of the day.

The vestry of Old Welmingham church was the starting-point from which
my mind slowly worked its way back through all that I had heard Mrs.
Catherick say, and through all I had seen Mrs. Catherick do.

At the time when the neighbourhood of the vestry was first referred to
in my presence by Mrs. Clements, I had thought it the strangest and
most unaccountable of all places for Sir Percival to select for a
clandestine meeting with the clerk's wife. Influenced by this
impression, and by no other, I had mentioned "the vestry of the church"
before Mrs. Catherick on pure speculation--it represented one of the
minor peculiarities of the story which occurred to me while I was
speaking. I was prepared for her answering me confusedly or angrily,
but the blank terror that seized her when I said the words took me
completely by surprise. I had long before associated Sir Percival's
Secret with the concealment of a serious crime which Mrs. Catherick
knew of, but I had gone no further than this. Now the woman's paroxysm
of terror associated the crime, either directly or indirectly, with the
vestry, and convinced me that she had been more than the mere witness
of it--she was also the accomplice, beyond a doubt.

What had been the nature of the crime? Surely there was a contemptible
side to it, as well as a dangerous side, or Mrs. Catherick would not
have repeated my own words, referring to Sir Percival's rank and power,
with such marked disdain as she had certainly displayed. It was a
contemptible crime then and a dangerous crime, and she had shared in
it, and it was associated with the vestry of the church.

The next consideration to be disposed of led me a step farther from
this point.

Mrs. Catherick's undisguised contempt for Sir Percival plainly extended
to his mother as well. She had referred with the bitterest sarcasm to
the great family he had descended from--"especially by the mother's
side." What did this mean?

There appeared to be only two explanations of it. Either his mother's
birth