The names mentioned in the letter were reported by the doctor and the nurse to be also the names on her lips when she spoke in her wanderings.  “Mr. Brinkworth” and “Blanche”—­her mind ran incessantly on those two persons.  The one intelligible thing that she mentioned in connection with them was the letter.  She was perpetually trying, trying, trying to take that unfinished letter to the post; and she could never get there.  Sometimes the post was across the sea.  Sometimes it was at the top of an inaccessible mountain.  Sometimes it was built in by prodigious walls all round it.  Sometimes a man stopped her cruelly at the moment when she was close at the post, and forced her back thousands of miles away from it.  She once or twice mentioned this visionary man by his name.  They made it out to be “Geoffrey.”

Finding no clew to her identity either in the letter that she had tried to write or in the wild words that escaped her from time to time, it was decided to search her luggage, and to look at the clothes which she had worn when she arrived at the hotel.

Her black box sufficiently proclaimed itself as recently purchased.  On opening it the address of a Glasgow trunk-maker was discovered inside.  The linen was also new, and unmarked.  The receipted shop-bill was found with it.  The tradesmen, sent for in each case and questioned, referred to their books.  It was proved that the box and the linen had both been purchased on the day when she appeared at the hotel.

Her black bag was opened next.  A sum of between eighty and ninety pounds in Bank of England notes; a few simple articles belonging to the toilet; materials for needle-work; and a photographic portrait of a young lady, inscribed, “To Anne, from Blanche,” were found in the bag—­but no letters, and nothing whatever that could afford the slightest clew by which the owner could be traced.  The pocket in her dress was searched next.  It contained a purse, an empty card-case, and a new handkerchief unmarked.

Mr. Camp shook his head.

“A woman’s luggage without any letters in it,” he said, “suggests to my mind a woman who has a motive of her own for keeping her movements a secret.  I suspect she has destroyed her letters, and emptied her card-case, with that view.”  Mrs. Karnegie’s report, after examining the linen which the so-called “Mrs. Graham” had worn when she arrived at the inn, proved the soundness of the lawyer’s opinion.  In every case the marks had been cut out.  Mrs. Karnegie began to doubt whether the ring which she had seen on the third finger of the lady’s left hand had been placed there with the sanction of the law.

There was but one chance left of discovering—­or rather of attempting to discover—­her friends.  Mr. Camp drew out an advertisement to be inserted in the Glasgow newspapers.  If those newspapers happened to be seen by any member of her family, she would, in all probability, be claimed.  In the contrary event there would be nothing for it but to wait for her recovery or her death—­with the money belonging to her sealed up, and deposited in the landlord’s strongbox.