Mrs. Van Dorn, who had been staring intently at the door, looked quickly at her companion with a curious expression.  Her face had flushed.

“What is it?” asked Mrs. Lee.  “You don’t suppose any one is in there and not coming to the door?” Mrs. Lee had a somewhat suspicious nature.

“No; I don’t think there is a soul in that house, but—­”

“But what?”

“Nothing, only—­”

“Only what?”

“Why, don’t you see what they have done?”

“I am afraid I don’t quite know what you mean,” Mrs. Lee returned, in a puzzled way.  It was quite evident that Mrs. Van Dorn wished her to grasp something which her own mind had mastered, that she wished it without further explanation, and Mrs. Lee felt bewilderedly apologetic that she could not comply.

“Don’t you see that they have gone off and left the front door unlocked?” said Mrs. Van Dorn, with inflections of embarrassment, eagerness, and impatience.  If she and Mrs. Lee had been, as of yore, school-children together, she would certainly have said, “You ninny!” to finish.

“Why!” returned Mrs. Lee, with a sort of gasp.  She saw then that the front door was not only unlocked, but slightly ajar.  “Do you suppose they really are not at home?” she whispered.

“Of course they are not at home.”

“Would they go away and leave the front door unlocked?”

“They have.”

“They might be in the back part of the house, and not have heard the bell,” Mrs. Lee said, with a curious tone, as if she replied to some unspoken suggestion.

“I know this house as well as I do my own.  You know how much I used to be here when the Ranger girls were alive.  There is not a room in this house where anybody with ears can’t hear the bell.”

Still, Mrs. Van Dorn spoke in that curiously ashamed and indignant voice.  Mrs. Lee contradicted her no further.

“Well, I suppose you must be right,” said she.  “There can’t be anybody at home; but it is strange they went off and did not even shut the front door.”

“I don’t know what the Ranger girls would have said, if they knew it.  They would have had a fit at the bare idea of going away for ever so short a time, and leaving the house and furniture alone and the door unlocked.”

“Their furniture is here now, I suppose?”

“Yes, I suppose so—­some of it, anyway, but I don’t know how much furniture these people bought, of course.”

“Mr. Lee said he heard they had such magnificent things.”

“I heard so, but you hear a good deal that isn’t so in Banbridge!”

“That is true.  I suppose you knew the house and the Ranger girls’ furniture so well that you could tell at a glance what was new and what wasn’t?”

“Yes, I could.”

As with one impulse both women turned and peered through a green maze of trees and bushes at Samson Rawdy, several yards distant.