there is something?"

"Oh, I believe so. But not probably at Seasands."

"Is that her house?"

"Yes. Every other name had been used, and she couldn't say Soundsands."

"Then where would the Mr. Westangular part more probably be found?"

"Oh, in Montana or Mesopotamia, or any of those places. Don't you
know about him? How ignorant literary people can be! Why, he was the
Amalgamated Clothespin. You haven't heard of that?"

She went on to tell him, with gay digressions, about the invention which
enabled Westangle to buy up the other clothes-pins and merge them in
his own--to become a commercial octopus, clutching the throats of other
clothespin inventors in the tentacles of the Westangle pin. "But he
isn't in clothespins now. He's in mines, and banks, and steamboats, and
railroads, and I don't know what all; and Mrs. Westangle, the second of
her name, never was in clothespins."

Miss Macroyd laughed all through her talk, and she was in a final burst
of laughing when the train slowed into Stamford. There a girl came
into the car trailing her skirts with a sort of vivid debility and
overturning some minor pieces of hand-baggage which her draperies swept
out of their shelter beside the chairs. She had to take one of the seats
which back against the wall of the state-room, where she must face the
whole length of the car. She sat weakly fallen back in the chair and
motionless, as if almost unconscious; but after the train had begun to
stir she started up, and with a quick flinging of her veil aside turned
to look out of the window. In the flying instant Verrian saw a colorless
face with pinched and sunken eyes under a worn-looking forehead, and a
withered mouth whose lips parted feebly.

On her part, Miss Macroyd had doubtless already noted that the girl
was, with no show of expensiveness, authoritatively well gowned and
personally hatted. She stared at her, and said, "What a very hunted and
escaping effect."

"She does look rather-fugitive," Verrian agreed, staring too.

"One might almost fancy--an asylum."

"Yes, or a hospital."

They continued both to stare at her, helpless for what ever different
reasons to take their eyes away, and they were still interested in
her when they heard her asking the conductor, "Must I change and take
another train before we get to Belford? My friends thought--"

"No, this train stops at Southfield," the conductor answered, absently
biting several holes into her drawing-room tick