yet.
Something that that poor dead chap did manage to tell me. A woman--a
lady--was out there on the Common to-night and paid him not to disclose
the fact."

"Great Scott! My dear fellow, you don't surely mean to hint that by any
possibility that poor child, Lady Katharine Fordham----"

"No, I do not. The lady in question was neither Lady Katharine Fordham,
who, you tell me, wore a white satin dress to-night, nor yet Miss Ailsa
Lorne, whose frock you say was of gauzy pink. The lady in question wore,
I understand, a gown of very pale green satin with what I take to have
been several diamond ornaments upon the corsage; furthermore, a delicate
but very distinct odour of violets clung about her."

"Good Lord!"

"No wonder you are surprised, Mr. Narkom. Ladies dressed in that fashion
are not, as a general thing, given to wandering about Wimbledon Common
either by night or by day, and the presence of this particular one is
curious, to say the least of it. I am of the opinion, however, that she
was no stranger to the Common keeper, otherwise he would have hurried
her into the shelter the instant she offered to bribe him, whistled up
the constable in Mulberry Lane, and given her in charge as a suspicious
character. Then there is another side to the affair which we must not
overlook. An entertainment was in progress at Clavering Close to-night,
and there must have been quite a number of ladies present dressed in
gala attire. But if your exclamation means that you have no
recollection of seeing one who wore a gown of pale green satin----"

"It doesn't!" rapped in Narkom excitedly. "It was the absurdity, the
madness, the--the utter impossibility of the thing. That she--she of all
women----! What rot!"

"Oho!" said Cleek, with a strong, rising inflection. "Then there _was_
such a gown in the rooms at Clavering Close to-night, eh? And you do
remember the lady that wore it?"

"Remember her? There's nobody I should be likely to remember better. It
was Lady Clavering herself!"

"Whew-w! The hostess?"

"Yes. Sir Philip's wife--young Geoff's stepmother; one of the sweetest,
gentlest, most womanly women that ever lived. And to suggest that she
... either the fellow must have deliberately lied or his statement was
the delusion of a dying man. It couldn't have happened--it simply
couldn't, Cleek. Why, man, her ladyship was there--at the Close--when I
left. It was she who put that jewel into my hand and asked me to leave
it at Wu