The group broke up guiltily on the appearance of Max, the laundry-maids taking flight in one direction, while the stablemen became suddenly busy with yard-broom and leather.

Max put a question or two to the groom who saddled his horse for him.

“There was no great harm done last night, was there, except in the garden?  You have not heard of anything being stolen, eh?”

“Well, no, sir.  But it brought a lot of people up as had no business here.  There was a person come up as we couldn’t get rid of, asking questions about the family, sir; and about Mr. Horne, too, sir.  She wouldn’t believe as he wasn’t here, an’ she frightened some of the women, I believe, sir.  They didn’t know where she’d got to, an’ nobody saw her go out of the place, so they’ve got an idea she’s hiding about.  A fortune-telling tramp, most likely, sir,” added the man, who wished he had held his tongue about the intruder when he saw how strongly the young master was affected by this story.

The fact was that Max instantly connected this apparition of a woman “who asked questions about Mr. Horne” with the ugly story told him at the house by the wharf, and he was glad that Dudley was not spending Christmas at The Beeches.

He was oppressed during the whole of his ride by this suggestion that the questionable characters of the wharfside were pursuing Dudley; it gave color to Carrie’s statement that it was Dudley who killed the man whom Max believed to have been Edward Jacobs; and it looked as if the object of the woman’s visit was to levy blackmail.

Or was it—­could it be that the woman was Carrie, and that her object was to warn Dudley?  To associate Carrie herself with the levying of blackmail was not possible to the susceptible Max in the present state of his feelings toward her.

And, just as he was meditating upon this mystery, all unprepared for a meeting with his sister, Doreen waylaid him.  He was entering the house by the back way, muddy from his ride, when she sprang upon him from an ambush on the stairs.

“I’ve been waiting all the morning to catch you alone,” said she, as she ran out from behind the tall clock and seized his arm.  “You’ve been trying to avoid me.  Don’t deny it.  I say you have.  As if it was any use!  No, you shall not go upstairs and take off your boots first.  You will just come into the study, mud and all, and tell me—­tell me what you know, not what you have been making up, mind!  I’m going to have the truth.”

“Well, you can’t,” returned her brother, shortly, as he allowed himself to be dragged across the hall, which looked cheerless enough without a fire, and with the great, clumsy, hideous, maimed old Yule log filling up the fireplace and reminding everybody of all that it had cost.

Doreen pushed him into the study and shut the door.

“Why can’t I know the truth?” asked she, eying him steadily.  “Do you mean that you have found out Dudley doesn’t care for me.”