“She has, indeed,” said the Colonel, looking very grave.  “Will you stay and receive her?”

“Oh no,” said Grace, horrified; “but I’ll take a good look at her through this curtain.  I have made a little hole on purpose.”  Then she slipped into the little room and drew the curtain.

The servant opened the door, and the false rector walked in, supporting on his arm a dark woman, still very beautiful; very plainly dressed, but well dressed, agitated, yet self-possessed.

“Be seated, madam,” said the Colonel.  After a reasonable pause he began to question her.

“You were married on the eleventh day of June, 1868, to a gentleman of the name of Walter Clifford?”

“I was, sir.”

“May I ask how long you lived with him?”

The lady buried her face in her hands.  The question took her by surprise, and this was a woman’s artifice to gain time and answer cleverly.

But the ingenious Monckton gave it a happy turn.  “Poor thing!  Poor thing!” said he.

“He left me the next day,” said Lucy, “and I have never seen him since.”

Here Monckton interposed; he fancied he had seen the curtain move.  “Excuse me,” said he, “I think there is somebody listening!” and he went swiftly and put his head through the curtain.  But the room was empty; for meantime Grace was so surprised by the lady’s arrival, by her beauty, which might well have tempted any man, and by her air of respectability, that she changed her tactics directly, and she was gone to her father for advice and information in spite of her previous determination not to worry him in his present condition.  What he said to her can be briefly told elsewhere; what he ordered her to do was to return and watch the man and not the woman.

During Lucy’s hesitation, which was somewhat long, a clergyman came to the window, looked in, and promptly retired, seeing the Colonel had company.  This, however, was only a modest curate, alias a detective.  He saw in half a moment that this must be Mark Waddy’s pal; but as the police like to go their own way he would not watch the lawn himself, but asked Jem Davies, with whom he had made acquaintance, to keep an eye upon that with his fellows, for there was a jail-bird in the house; then he went round to the front door, by which he felt sure his bird would make his exit.  He had no earthly right to capture this ecclesiastic, but he was prepared if the Colonel, who was a magistrate, gave him the order, and not without.

But we are interrupting Colonel Clifford’s interrogatories.

“Madam, what makes you think this disloyal person was my son?”

“Indeed, sir, I don’t know,” said the lady, and looking around the room with some signs of distress.  “I begin to hope it was not your son.  He was a tall young man, almost as tall as yourself.  He was very handsome, with brown hair and brown eyes, and seemed incapable of deceit.”