n all tongues. He withdrew and
painted pictures. He felt no leaning towards journalism, and Sir James,
who knew a good deal about art, honourably refrained--as other editors
did not--from tempting him with a good salary. But in the course of a
few years he had applied to him perhaps thirty times for his services in
the unravelling of similar problems at home and abroad. Sometimes
Trent, busy with work that held him, had refused; sometimes he had
been forestalled in the discovery of the truth. But the result of his
irregular connection with the Record had been to make his name one of
the best known in England. It was characteristic of him that his name
was almost the only detail of his personality known to the public. He
had imposed absolute silence about himself upon the Molloy papers; and
the others were not going to advertise one of Sir James's men.

The Manderson case, he told himself as he walked rapidly up the sloping
road to White Gables, might turn out to be terribly simple. Cupples
was a wise old boy, but it was probably impossible for him to have an
impartial opinion about his niece. But it was true that the manager
of the hotel, who had spoken of her beauty in terms that aroused his
attention, had spoken even more emphatically of her goodness. Not an
artist in words, the manager had yet conveyed a very definite idea to
Trent's mind. 'There isn't a child about here that don't brighten up
at the sound of her voice,' he had said, 'nor yet a grown-up, for the
matter of that. Everybody used to look forward to her coming over in
the summer. I don't mean that she's one of those women that are all kind
heart and nothing else. There's backbone with it, if you know what I
mean--pluck any amount of go. There's nobody in Marlstone that isn't
sorry for the lady in her trouble--not but what some of us may think
she's lucky at the last of it.' Trent wanted very much to meet Mrs.
Manderson.

He could see now, beyond a spacious lawn and shrubbery, the front of the
two-storied house of dull-red brick, with the pair of great gables from
which it had its name. He had had but a glimpse of it from the car that
morning. A modern house, he saw; perhaps ten years old. The place was
beautifully kept, with that air of opulent peace that clothes even the
smallest houses of the well-to-do in an English countryside. Before
it, beyond the road, the rich meadow-land ran down to the edge of the
cliffs; behind it a woody landscape stretched a