He found her alone in her pretty drawing-room, Sir Paul having gone to Windsor on some business matter, and Miss Norris being out for a walk. She was still looking very pale, and her lover noticed that a paper was lying beside her in which was a column headed, "The murder of Mr. Cundall." Had she been reading that, he wondered, at the very time when he was on his way to tell her of the relationship that had existed between him and that other man who had loved her so dearly? When he had kissed her, wondering, as he did so, if it was the last kiss she would ever let him press upon her lips after she knew of what he had kept back from her at their last interview, she said to him:
"And now tell me what you have done towards finding Mr. Cundall's murderer? What steps have you taken, whom have you employed to search for that man?"
"It is thought," he answered, "that there is some man, now in England, who may have done it. A man whose name is Corot, and who was continually obtaining money from him."
"How is this known?"
"By some letters that have been found amongst Cundall's papers. Letters asking for money, and, in one case, threatening him if some was not sent at once; and with notes in his handwriting saying that different sums had been sent when demanded."
"Corot," she said, repeating the name to herself in a whisper, "Corot." Then, after a pause, she said, "No! That man is not the assassin."
"Not the assassin, Ida!" Penlyn said. "Why do you think he is not?"
"Because I have never known him, because the form of the man who slew him in my dream was familiar to me, and this man's form cannot be so."
"My darling," he said, "you place too much importance on this dream. Remember what fantasies of the brain they are, and how few of them have ever any bearing on the actual events of life."
"This was no fantasy," she answered, "no fantasy. When the murderer is discovered--if he ever is--it will be seen that I have known him. I am as sure of it as that I am sitting here. But who was he? Who was he? I have gone over and over again every man whom I have ever known, and yet I cannot bring to my mind which of all those men it is that that shrouded figure resembles." She paused again, and then she asked: "Has it been discovered yet whether he had any relations?"