That resolve was not weakened by successive encounters, first with a policeman near the entrance gates, next with a trespasser whom Langholm rightly took for another policeman in plain clothes, and finally with the Woodgates on their way from the house.  The good couple welcomed him with a warmth beyond his merits.

“Oh, what a blessing you have come!” cried Morna, whose kind eyes discovered a tell-tale moisture.  “Do please go up and convince Mrs. Steel that you can’t be rearrested on a charge on which you have already been tried and acquitted!”

“But of course you can’t,” said Langholm.  “Who has put that into her head, Mrs. Woodgate?”

“The place is hemmed in by police.”

“Since when?” asked Langholm, quickly.

“Only this morning.”

Langholm held his tongue.  So the extortioner Abel, outwitted by the amateur policeman, had gone straight to the professional force!  The amateur had not suspected him of such resource.

“I don’t think this has anything to do with Mrs. Steel,” he said at last; “in fact, I think I know what it means, and I shall be only too glad to reassure her, if I can.”

But his own face was not reassuring, as Hugh Woodgate plainly told him in the first words which the vicar contributed to the discussion.

“I have been finding out things—­I have not been altogether unsuccessful—­but the things are rather on my mind,” the author explained.  “How does Steel take the development, by the way?”

“As a joke!” cried Morna, with indignation; her husband was her echo both as to words and tone; but Langholm could only stare.

“I must see him,” he exclaimed, decisively.  “By the way, once more, do you happen to know whether Mrs. Steel got a letter from me this morning, Mrs. Woodgate?”

“Yes, she did,” answered Morna at once.  Her manner declared her to be not unacquainted with the contents of the letter, and Langholm treated the declaration as though spoken.

“And is she not going to see that poor fellow?” he asked.

“At once,” said Morna, “and I am going with her.  She is to call for me with the phaeton at three.”

“Do you know anything about him, Mrs. Woodgate?”

“All.”

“Then I can only commend him to the sympathy which I know he has already.  And I will talk to Mr. Steel while you are gone.”

The first sentence was almost mechanical.  That matter was off Langholm’s mind, and in a flash it was fully occupied with the prospect before himself.  He lifted the peak of his cap, but, instead of remounting his bicycle, he wheeled it very slowly up the drive.  The phaeton was at the door when Langholm also arrived, and Rachel herself ran out to greet him on the steps—­tall and lissome, in a light-colored driving cloak down to her heels, and a charming hat—­yet under it a face still years older than the one he wore in his heart, though no less beautiful in its distress.