On the other hand, it seemed rather odd, when he analyzed the action, that a woman who deliberately hid herself from her husband for more than a twelvemonth should be brought back by a mere advertisement.  In fact, the whole business had worked almost too smoothly and effectually for unpremeditated sequence.  It was too much like the indiscriminate righting of everything at the end of an old play.  And there was that curious business of the keys and watch.  Her way of accounting for their being left behind by forgetfulness had always seemed to him rather forced.  The only unforced explanation was that suggested by the newspaper writers —­that she left them behind on purpose to blind people as to her escape, a motive which would have clashed with the possibility of her being fished back by an advertisement, as the present woman had been.  Again, there were the two charred bones.  He shuffled the books and papers in his study, and walked about the room, restlessly musing on the same subject.  The parlour-maid entered.

‘Can young Mr. Springrove from London see you to-night, sir?’

‘Young Mr. Springrove?’ said the rector, surprised.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Yes, of course he can see me.  Tell him to come in.’

Edward came so impatiently into the room, as to show that the few short moments his announcement had occupied had been irksome to him.  He stood in the doorway with the same black bag in his hand, and the same old gray cloak on his shoulders, that he had worn fifteen months earlier when returning on the night of the fire.  This appearance of his conveyed a true impression; he had become a stagnant man.  But he was excited now.

‘I have this moment come from London,’ he said, as the door was closed behind him.

The prophetic insight, which so strangely accompanies critical experiences, prompted Mr. Raunham’s reply.

‘About the Grayes and Manston?’

‘Yes.  That woman is not Mrs. Manston.’

‘Prove it.’

’I can prove that she is somebody else—­that her name is Anne Seaway.’

‘And are their suspicions true indeed!’

‘And I can do what’s more to the purpose at present.’

‘Suggest Manston’s motive?’

’Only suggest it, remember.  But my assumption fits so perfectly with the facts that have been secretly unearthed and conveyed to me, that I can hardly conceive of another.’

There was in Edward’s bearing that entire unconsciousness of himself which, natural to wild animals, only prevails in a sensitive man at moments of extreme intentness.  The rector saw that he had no trivial story to communicate, whatever the story was.

‘Sit down,’ said Mr. Raunham.  ’My mind has been on the stretch all the evening to form the slightest guess at such an object, and all to no purpose—­entirely to no purpose.  Have you said anything to Owen Graye?’

’Nothing—­nor to anybody.  I could not trust to the effect a letter might have upon yourself, either; the intricacy of the case brings me to this interview.’