me out of bed to know what I’d done with him!”

With a sharp effort Bernald gathered himself together to have it out. “Well, what did you do with him?” he retorted.

She laughed her appreciation of his humour. “Just what I told you, of course. I said good-bye to him on Isabella’s door-step.”

Bernald looked at her. “It’s really true, then, that he didn’t go home with you?”

She bantered back: “Have you suspected me, all this time, of hiding his remains in the cellar?” And with a droop of her fine lids she added: “I wish he had come home with me, for he was rather interesting, and there were things about Pellerinism that I think I could have explained to him.”

Bernald helped himself to a nectarine, and Miss Fosdick continued on a note of amused curiosity: “So you’ve really never had any news of him since that night?”

“No—I’ve never had any news of him.”

“Not the least little message?”

“Not the least little message.”

“Or a rumour or report of any kind?”

“Or a rumour or report of any kind.”

Miss Fosdick’s interest seemed to be revived by the undeniable strangeness of the case. “It’s rather creepy, isn’t it? What could have happened? You don’t suppose he could have been waylaid and murdered?” she asked with brightening eyes.

Bernald shook his head serenely. “No. I’m sure he’s safe—quite safe.”

“But if you’re sure, you must know something.”

“No. I know nothing,” he repeated.

She scanned him incredulously. “But what’s your theory—for you must have a theory? What in the world can have become of him?”

Bernald returned her look and hesitated. “Do you happen to remember the last thing he said to you—the very last, on the door step, when he left you?”

“The last thing?” She poised her fork above the peach on her plate. “I don’t think he said anything. Oh, yes—when I reminded him that he’d solemnly promised to come back with me and have a little talk he said he couldn’t because he was going home.”

“Well, then, I suppose,” said Bernald, “he went home.”

She glanced at him as if suspecting a trap. “Dear me, how flat! I always inclined to a mysterious murder. But of course you know more of him than you say.”

She began to cut her peach, but paused above a lifted bit to ask, with a renewal of animation in her expressive eyes: “By the way, had you heard that Howland Wade has been gradually getting farther and farther away from Pellerinism? It seems he’s begun to feel that there’s a Positivist element in it which is narrowing to any one who has gone at all deeply into the Wisdom of the East. He was intensely interesting about it the other day, and of course I do see what he feels ... Oh, it’s too long to tell you now; but if you could manage to come in to tea some afternoon soon—any day but Wednesday—I should so like to explain—”

XINGU1

I.

MRS. BALLINGER IS ONE of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet alone. To this end she had founded the Lunch Club, an association composed of herself and several other indomitable huntresses of erudition. The Lunch Club, after three or four winters of lunching and debate, had acquired such local distinction that the entertainment of distinguished strangers became one of its accepted functions; in recognition of which it duly extended to the celebrated “Osric Dane,” on the day of her arrival in Hillbridge,2 an invitation to be present at the next meeting.

The club was to meet at Mrs. Ballinger’s. The other members, behind her back, were of one voice in deploring her unwillingness to cede her rights in favor of Mrs. Plinth, whose house made a more impressive setting for the entertainment of celebrities; while, as Mrs. Leveret observed, there was always the picture-gallery to fall back on.

Mrs. Plinth made no secret of sharing this view. She had always regarded it as one of her obligations to entertain the Lunch Club’s distinguished guests. Mrs. Plinth was almost as proud of her obligations as she was of her picture-gallery; she was in fact fond of implying that the one possession implied the other, and that only a woman of her wealth could afford to live up to a standard as high as that which she had set herself An all-round sense of duty, roughly adaptable to various ends, was, in her opinion, all that Providence exacted of the more humbly stationed; but the power which had predestined Mrs. Plinth