rely you met
it on the way? I gave the man a description of you. Didn't he stop for
you?"

"Oh yes, but I was too proud to change by that time. Or perhaps I hated
the trouble."

Miss Macroyd laughed the more; then she purposely darkened her
countenance so as to suit it to her lugubrious whisper, "How did she get
here?"

"What she?"

"The mysterious fugitive. Wasn't she coming here, after all?"

"After all your trouble in supposing so?" Verrian reflected a moment,
and then he said, deliberately, "I don't know."

Miss Macroyd was not going to let him off like that. "You don't know how
she came, or you don't know whether she was coming?"

"I didn't say."

Her laugh resounded again. "Now you are trying to be wicked, and that is
very wrong for a novelist."

"But what object could I have in concealing the fact from you, Miss
Macroyd?" he entreated, with mock earnestness.

"That is what I want to find out."

"What are you two laughing so about?" the voice of Mrs. Westangle
twittered at Verrian's elbow, and, looking down, he found her almost
touching it. She had a very long, narrow neck, and, since it was long
and narrow, she had the good sense not to palliate the fact or try to
dress the effect of it out of sight. She took her neck in both hands, as
it were, and put it more on show, so that you had really to like it. Now
it lifted her face, though she was not a tall person, well towards the
level of his; to be sure, he was himself only of the middle height of
men, though an aquiline profile helped him up.

He stirred the tea which he had ceased to drink, and said, "I wasn't
'laughing so about,' Mrs. Westangle. It was Miss Macroyd."

"And I was laughing so about a mysterious stranger that came up on the
train with us and got out at your station."

"And I was trying to make out what was so funny in a mysterious
stranger, or even in her getting out at your station."

Mrs. Westangle was not interested in the case, or else she failed
to seize the joke. At any rate, she turned from them without further
question and went away to another part of the room, where she
semi-attached herself in like manner to another couple, and again left
it for still another. This was possibly her idea of looking after her
guests; but when she had looked after them a little longer in that way
she left the room and let them look after themselves till dinner.

"Come, Mr. Verrian," Miss Macroyd resumed, "what is the secret? I'll
never