"When we find that, miss, the murder'll be aout," was the good lady's opinion.
Claud thought so too.
"First catch your hare," he murmured, as he paused at the door. "Have I kept you waiting, Miss Allonby?"
"Scarcely a minute," she answered, rising, and nodding a "good evening" to Mrs. Clapp.
"I called in at the postman's," he said, as they turned homewards, "and have brought you this, as the result of my enterprise."
He produced the packet of proofs, with his eyes fixed on her. Her face did not change in the least.
"Thanks," she said, "but what a heavy packet for you to carry—let me relieve you of it."
"Certainly not; it goes easily in my pocket;" and he replaced it with a curious sense of being baffled. Should he leave the subject, or should he take the bull by the horns and tax her with it? It might be merely a sense of shyness which made her unwilling to talk of her writings.
"I did not know you were an authoress, Miss Allonby," he said.
"No? I have not written very much," she answered, frankly.