ing"—he spoke as if he were at Maidenhead or Marlow—"find out all I can there, and return here in time for the Coroner's next sitting. By which time," added the specialist cheerily, "I hope we shall have got up a pretty little case for the Public Prosecutor. Mr. Heathcote will kindly keep me informed of any new details that crop up here. I shall have the poor little girl's photograph in my pocket-book. You'll send a messenger to your town early to-morrow morning, Wyllard, and tell the photographer to meet me at the station with his photographs of the dead girl? He ought to have them ready by that time."
"I will give the order to-night," said Wyllard; and then the three men repaired to the drawing-room.
"I have been very happy here," said Hilda to her brother; "but I thought you were never coming for me. Mrs. Wyllard must be dreadfully tired."
"Never tired of your company, Hilda," interjected Dora. "Nor of Schubert."
"And as for Mr. Grahame, he has been asleep ever since dinner."
"That is a baseless calumny, Miss Heathcote. I have not lost a note of your songs. I am told that Schubert was rather a low person—convivial, that is to say somewhat Bohemian; fond of taverns and tavern company. But I will maintain there must have been a pure and beautiful soul in the man who wrote such songs as those."
"I am so glad you like them," answered Hilda, brightening at his praise. "I daresay you often heard them in India."
"No; the people I knew in India had not such good taste as you."
"But in a country like that, where ladies have so little to do, music must be such a resource," persisted Hilda, who was curiously interested in Mr. Grahame's Indian experiences.
She was always wondering what his life had been like in that strange distant world, what kind of people he had known there. She wondered all the more perhaps on account of Bothwell's reticence. She could never get him to talk freely of his Indian days, and this gave the whole thing an air of mystery.
The clock in the great gray pile of stabling was striking twelve as the Coroner's carriage drove away.
"I cannot think what has happened to Mr. Grahame," said Hilda. "He used to be so lively, and now he is so dull."
"The change is palpable to others, then, as well as to me," thought Heathcote. "Whatever the cause may be, there is a change. God help him if my fear is well grounded! If I were a criminal, I would as soon have a sleuthhound on my track as Joseph Distin."
Mr. Distin was on his way to London before noon next day,
