Jeffray found Dick Wilson sitting smoking at the open window of the library with his feet resting on the sill. He dropped his fat calves when Richard entered, and looked at him a little uneasily over his shoulder. Both men remembered the night of the Hardacre ball, when Wilson had confessed the truth of his old love affair with Miss Jilian. Jeffray felt that he could trust the painter, and he was in the spirit to treat him as a friend. Drawing up a chair beside Dick Wilson’s, he sat himself down before the open window.
“You saw the girl on the terrace, Dick?” he asked.
Wilson turned restlessly in his chair, his chin sunk upon his shabby green waistcoat.
“I did,” he said, quietly.
“Do you remember where you saw her before?”
The painter shook his head and frowned as though mystified.
“You remember the day we drove to Thorney Chapel?”
Wilson cocked one shrewd blue eye at Jeffray, and removed his pipe-stem from between his lips.
“You have set me thinking, sir,” he said, suddenly.
“The girl on the terrace—”