At last Mr. Sleuth’s bell rang—­a quiet little tinkle.  But when she went up with his breakfast the lodger was not in his sitting-room.

Supposing him to be still in his bedroom, Mrs. Bunting put the cloth on the table, and then she heard the sound of his footsteps coming down the stairs, and her quick ears detected the slight whirring sound which showed that the gas-stove was alight.  Mr. Sleuth had already lit the stove; that meant that he would carry out some elaborate experiment this afternoon.

“Still snowing?” he said doubtfully.  “How very, very quiet and still London is when under snow, Mrs. Bunting.  I have never known it quite as quiet as this morning.  Not a sound, outside or in.  A very pleasant change from the shouting which sometimes goes on in the Marylebone Road.”

“Yes,” she said dully.  “It’s awful quiet to-day—­too quiet to my thinking.  ’Tain’t natural-like.”

The outside gate swung to, making a noisy clatter in the still air.

“Is that someone coming in here?” asked Mr. Sleuth, drawing a quick, hissing breath.  “Perhaps you will oblige me by going to the window and telling me who it is, Mrs. Bunting?”

And his landlady obeyed him.

“It’s only Bunting, sir—­Bunting and his daughter.”

“Oh!  Is that all?”

Mr. Sleuth hurried after her, and she shrank back a little.  She had never been quite so near to the lodger before, save on that first day when she had been showing him her rooms.

Side by side they stood, looking out of the window.  And, as if aware that someone was standing there, Daisy turned her bright face up towards the window and smiled at her stepmother, and at the lodger, whose face she could only dimly discern.

“A very sweet-looking young girl,” said Mr. Sleuth thoughtfully.  And then he quoted a little bit of poetry, and this took Mrs. Bunting very much aback.

“Wordsworth,” he murmured dreamily.  “A poet too little read nowadays, Mrs. Bunting; but one with a beautiful feeling for nature, for youth, for innocence.”

“Indeed, sir?” Mrs. Bunting stepped back a little.  “Your breakfast will be getting cold, sir, if you don’t have it now.”

He went back to the table, obediently, and sat down as a child rebuked might have done.

And then his landlady left him.

“Well?” said Bunting cheerily.  “Everything went off quite all right.  And Daisy’s a lucky girl—­that she is!  Her Aunt Margaret gave her five shillings.”

But Daisy did not look as pleased as her father thought she ought to do.

“I hope nothing’s happened to Mr. Chandler,” she said a little disconsolately.  “The very last words he said to me last night was that he’d be there at ten o’clock.  I got quite fidgety as the time went on and he didn’t come.”

“He’s been here,” said Mrs. Bunting slowly.

“Been here?” cried her husband.  “Then why on earth didn’t he go and fetch Daisy, if he’d time to come here?”