“Were you wishing to make any inquiries about the last occupants of Hazel Cottage, sir?” she asked.

“Yes,” Gilbert answered huskily, looking at her in an absent unseeing way.

He had seen her often during his visits to the cottage, busy at work in her garden, which was much smaller than the Captain’s, but he had never spoken to her before to-day.

She was a maiden lady, who eked out her slender income by letting a part of her miniature abode whenever an opportunity for so doing occurred.  The care of this cottage occupied all her days, and formed the delight and glory of her life.  It was a little larger than a good-sized doll’s house, and furnished with spindle-legged chairs and tables that had been polished to the last extremity of brightness.

“Perhaps you would be so good as to walk into my sitting-room for a few moments, sir,” said this lady, opening her garden-gate.  “I shall be most happy to afford you any information about your friends.”

“You are very good,” said Gilbert, following her into the prim little parlour.

He had recovered his self-possession in some degree by this time, telling himself that this desertion of Hazel Cottage involved no more than a change of residence.

“My name is Dodd,” said the lady, motioning Mr. Fenton to a chair, “Miss Letitia Dodd.  I had the pleasure of seeing you very often during your visits next door.  I was not on visiting terms with Captain Sedgewick and Miss Nowell, although we bowed to each other out of doors.  I am only a tradesman’s daughter—­indeed my brother is now carrying on business as a butcher in Fairleigh—­and of course I am quite aware of the difference in our positions.  I am the last person to intrude myself upon my superiors.”

“If you will be so kind as to tell me where they have gone?” Gilbert asked, eager to stop this formal statement of Miss Dodd’s social standing.

“Where they have gone!” she repeated.  “Dear, dear!  Then you do not know——­”

“I do not know what?”

“Of Captain Sedgewick’s death.”

“Good God!  My dear old friend!  When did he die?”

“At the beginning of the year.  It was very sudden—­a fit of apoplexy.  He was seized in the night, poor dear gentleman, and it was only discovered when the servant went to call him in the morning.  He only lived two days after the seizure; and never spoke again.”

“And Miss Nowell—­what made her leave the cottage?  She is still at Lidford, I suppose?”

“O dear no, Mr. Fenton.  She went away altogether about a month after the Captain’s death.”

“Where did she go?”

“I cannot tell you that, I did not even know that she intended leaving Hazel Cottage until the day after she left.  When I saw the shutters closed and the board up, you might have knocked me down with a feather.  Miss Nowell was so much liked in Lidford, and she had more than one invitation from friends to stay with them for the sake of a change after her uncle’s death; but she would not visit anywhere.  She stayed quite alone in the cottage, with only the old servant.”