“But I have told her,” exploded Diana, with more than her congenital exasperation.  “I have told her, and she doesn’t seem to mind.  She still says she’s going away with Smith in that cab.”

“But it’s impossible!” ejaculated Rosamund.  “Why, Mary is really religious.  She—­”

She stopped in time to realize that Mary Gray was comparatively close to her on the lawn.  Her quiet companion had come down very quietly into the garden, but dressed very decisively for travel.  She had a neat but very ancient blue tam-o’-shanter on her head, and was pulling some rather threadbare gray gloves on to her hands.  Yet the two tints fitted excellently with her heavy copper-coloured hair; the more excellently for the touch of shabbiness:  for a woman’s clothes never suit her so well as when they seem to suit her by accident.

But in this case the woman had a quality yet more unique and attractive.  In such gray hours, when the sun is sunk and the skies are already sad, it will often happen that one reflection at some occasional angle will cause to linger the last of the light.  A scrap of window, a scrap of water, a scrap of looking-glass, will be full of the fire that is lost to all the rest of the earth.  The quaint, almost triangular face of Mary Gray was like some triangular piece of mirror that could still repeat the splendour of hours before.  Mary, though she was always graceful, could never before have properly been called beautiful; and yet her happiness amid all that misery was so beautiful as to make a man catch his breath.

“O Diana,” cried Rosamund in a lower voice and altering her phrase; “but how did you tell her?”

“It is quite easy to tell her,” answered Diana sombrely; “it makes no impression at all.”

“I’m afraid I’ve kept everything waiting,” said Mary Gray apologetically, “and now we must really say good-bye.  Innocent is taking me to his aunt’s over at Hampstead, and I’m afraid she goes to bed early.”

Her words were quite casual and practical, but there was a sort of sleepy light in her eyes that was more baffling than darkness; she was like one speaking absently with her eye on some very distant object.

“Mary, Mary,” cried Rosamund, almost breaking down, “I’m so sorry about it, but the thing can’t be at all.  We—­we have found out all about Mr. Smith.”

“All?” repeated Mary, with a low and curious intonation; “why, that must be awfully exciting.”

There was no noise for an instant and no motion except that the silent Michael Moon, leaning on the gate, lifted his head, as it might be to listen.  Then Rosamund remaining speechless, Dr. Pym came to her rescue in a definite way.

“To begin with,” he said, “this man Smith is constantly attempting murder.  The Warden of Brakespeare College—­”

“I know,” said Mary, with a vague but radiant smile.  “Innocent told me.”

“I can’t say what he told you,” replied Pym quickly, “but I’m very much afraid it wasn’t true.  The plain truth is that the man’s stained with every known human crime.  I assure you I have all the documents.  I have evidence of his committing burglary, signed by a most eminent English curate.  I have—­”