“Very well, Madam.  But Mr. Boyne is not in,” said Trimmle, putting down the lamp.

“Not in?  You mean he’s come back and gone out again?”

“No, Madam.  He’s never been back.”

The dread stirred again, and Mary knew that now it had her fast.

“Not since he went out with—­the gentleman?”

“Not since he went out with the gentleman.”

“But who was the gentleman?” Mary gasped out, with the sharp note of some one trying to be heard through a confusion of meaningless noises.

“That I couldn’t say, Madam.”  Trimmle, standing there by the lamp, seemed suddenly to grow less round and rosy, as though eclipsed by the same creeping shade of apprehension.

“But the kitchen-maid knows—­wasn’t it the kitchen-maid who let him in?”

“She doesn’t know either, Madam, for he wrote his name on a folded paper.”

Mary, through her agitation, was aware that they were both designating the unknown visitor by a vague pronoun, instead of the conventional formula which, till then, had kept their allusions within the bounds of custom.  And at the same moment her mind caught at the suggestion of the folded paper.

“But he must have a name!  Where is the paper?”

She moved to the desk, and began to turn over the scattered documents that littered it.  The first that caught her eye was an unfinished letter in her husband’s hand, with his pen lying across it, as though dropped there at a sudden summons.

“My dear Parvis,”—­who was Parvis?—­“I have just received your letter announcing Elwell’s death, and while I suppose there is now no farther risk of trouble, it might be safer—­”

She tossed the sheet aside, and continued her search; but no folded paper was discoverable among the letters and pages of manuscript which had been swept together in a promiscuous heap, as if by a hurried or a startled gesture.

“But the kitchen-maid saw him.  Send her here,” she commanded, wondering at her dullness in not thinking sooner of so simple a solution.

Trimmle, at the behest, vanished in a flash, as if thankful to be out of the room, and when she reappeared, conducting the agitated underling, Mary had regained her self-possession, and had her questions pat.

The gentleman was a stranger, yes—­that she understood.  But what had he said?  And, above all, what had he looked like?  The first question was easily enough answered, for the disconcerting reason that he had said so little—­had merely asked for Mr. Boyne, and, scribbling something on a bit of paper, had requested that it should at once be carried in to him.

“Then you don’t know what he wrote?  You’re not sure it was his name?”

The kitchen-maid was not sure, but supposed it was, since he had written it in answer to her inquiry as to whom she should announce.

“And when you carried the paper in to Mr. Boyne, what did he say?”