Gifford recalled Morriston’s story of having met Henshaw hanging about more or less mysteriously in the plantation, and the annoyance he had expressed at the encounter.  The reason was plain enough now.  Of course the man was waiting either to waylay Edith Morriston or to meet her by appointment.  It was not a pleasant reflection; since the fact showed that these clandestine meetings had probably been going on for some days past.  That Henshaw’s object was more or less disreputable could not be doubted, and to Gifford the amazing and troubling part of it was that Edith Morriston, the very last woman he would have suspected of consenting to such a course, who had professed an absolute dislike and repugnance to Henshaw, and fear of his annoying presence, should be meeting him thus willingly.  Had he not seen them with his own eyes he would have scoffed at the idea as something inconceivable.

Now what was he to do?  For it was clear that, justified or not as he might be thought in interfering in matters which did not concern him, something must be done.  The one obvious course which it seemed he ought to take was to give Richard Morriston a hint of what was on foot, if not a stronger and more explicit statement.  For that Morriston could be privy to the correspondence between his sister and Henshaw was quite unlikely.  If anything underhand was going on, if Henshaw was holding some threat over the girl or pursuing her with unwelcome attentions her brother, as her natural guardian, should be warned.  That seemed to Gifford his manifest duty.  And yet he shrank from anything which might seem treachery towards the girl.  For, if she needed her brother’s help and protection against the man, it would be an easy matter for her to complain of his persecution.  Why, he wondered, had she not done so?  It was all very mysterious.  He tried to imagine how the position had come about.  On Henshaw’s side it was plain enough.  Miss Morriston was not only a strikingly handsome girl, but she was an heiress, possessing, according to Kelson, a considerable fortune in her own right.  There, clearly, was Henshaw’s motive; an incentive to an unscrupulous man to use every art, fair and unfair, to force himself into her favour.  But how had he succeeded so quickly as to make this rather haughty, reserved girl consent to meet in secret the man whom she professed to dislike and avoid?  That this unpleasantly sharp, pushing product of the less dignified side of the law could have any personal attraction for one of Edith Morriston’s taste and discrimination was impossible.  And yet there the challenging fact remained that confidential relations had been established between the disparate pair.  Was it possible that this man could have found out something connecting Edith Morriston with his brother’s death?  The feasibility of the idea came as a shock to Gifford.  He stopped dead in his walk as the notion took form in his brain.  The possibilities of this most mysterious case were too complicated to be grasped at once.  And so with his mind in a whirl of vague conjecture and apprehension he reached his hotel.  And there a new development in the mystery awaited him.