“Ah! and you’ll please to notify that Corney’s no quack at sea, by favour of the monks of the Chartreuse, whose elixir has power to still the waves.  And we hear that miracles are done with!”

“Roll a physician and a monk together, doctor!”

“True:  it’ll be a miracle if they combine.  Though the cure of the soul is often the entire and total cure of the body:  and it’s maliciously said that the body given over to our treatment is a signal to set the soul flying.  By the way, colonel, that boy has a trifle on his mind.”

“I suppose he has been worrying a farmer or a gamekeeper.”

“Try him.  You’ll find him tight.  He’s got Miss Middleton on the brain.  There’s a bit of a secret; and he’s not so cheerful about it.”

“We’ll see,” said the colonel.

Dr Corney nodded.  “I have to visit my patient here presently.  I’m too early for him:  so I’ll make a call or two on the lame birds that are up,” he remarked, and drove away.

De Craye strolled through the garden.  He was a gentleman of those actively perceptive wits which, if ever they reflect, do so by hops and jumps:  upon some dancing mirror within, we may fancy.  He penetrated a plot in a flash; and in a flash he formed one; but in both cases, it was after long hovering and not over-eager deliberation, by the patient exercise of his quick perceptives.  The fact that Crossjay was considered to have Miss Middleton on the brain, threw a series of images of everything relating to Crossjay for the last forty hours into relief before him:  and as he did not in the slightest degree speculate on any one of them, but merely shifted and surveyed them, the falcon that he was in spirit as well as in his handsome face leisurely allowed his instinct to direct him where to strike.  A reflective disposition has this danger in action, that it commonly precipitates conjecture for the purpose of working upon probabilities with the methods and in the tracks to which it is accustomed:  and to conjecture rashly is to play into the puzzles of the maze.  He who can watch circling above it awhile, quietly viewing, and collecting in his eye, gathers matter that makes the secret thing discourse to the brain by weight and balance; he will get either the right clue or none; more frequently none; but he will escape the entanglement of his own cleverness, he will always be nearer to the enigma than the guesser or the calculator, and he will retain a breadth of vision forfeited by them.  He must, however, to have his chance of success, be acutely besides calmly perceptive, a reader of features, audacious at the proper moment.

De Craye wished to look at Miss Dale.  She had returned home very suddenly, not, as it appeared, owing to her father’s illness; and he remembered a redness of her eyelids when he passed her on the corridor one night.  She sent Crossjay out to him as soon as the boy was well filled.  He sent Crossjay back with a request.  She did not yield to it immediately.  She stepped to the front door reluctantly, and seemed disconcerted.  De Craye begged for a message to Miss Middleton.  There was none to give.  He persisted.  But there was really none at present, she said.