The girl might be hungry, but feminine curiosity proved stronger than the urgent claims of an empty stomach. She went into the larder, and undoubtedly eyed the new tenant's stores. She implied as much when she re-entered the dining-room.

"Boiled eggs require pepper and salt," she explained. "You've got so many little paper bags that I didn't dare rummage among them, so I've secured a cruet which was left here when my—when the people who used to live here went away. The salt may be a bit damp, but the pepper should be all right."

Without more ado she tackled a slice of bread, breaking it into small pieces, and buttering each piece separately before munching it.

"Some wise person said in a newspaper the other day that one ought to give every mouthful of bread three hundred bites," she went on. "I wonder if he ever fasted eighteen hours before practicing his own precept. I'm afraid I wouldn't believe him if he said he did."

"People who study their digestion generally die young," said Armathwaite drily.

"Oh, I don't agree with you in that," she retorted. "My dad is great on food theories. He knows all about proteins and carbohydrates; he can tell you to a fourth decimal the caloric value of an egg; and he's a phenomenally healthy person. By the way, how are those eggs coming on?"

"Try this one. I think the water has been boiling three minutes!"

Armathwaite spoke calmly enough, but a stoutly-built edifice of circumstantial evidence had just crumbled in ruins about his ears. He was persuaded that, for some reason best known to herself, Miss Marguérite Garth had adopted this freakish method of revisiting her old home. Such a thesis made all things plausible. It explained her singularly self-contained pose, her knowledge of the house's contents, her wish to remain hidden from prying eyes, and, last but not least, it brought the peculiar conduct of the Jackson family into a commonplace category, for the two women would be governed by a clannish feeling which is almost as powerful in rural Yorkshire as in Scotland. A girl who had lived nearly all her life in the village would be looked on as a native. She might appeal confidently for their help and connivance in such a matter.

But this girl's father was alive, and Marguérite Garth's father had been in a suicide's grave two years. Who, then, was the audacious young lady now assuring him that he could boil eggs admirably? He was 

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