“Will you wait in the living-room, miss? Mr. Derrick is working in the study.”

“Thanks, I’ll wait here.”

Perkins tapped at the study door.

“Miss Millicent, sir.”

Derrick put down his pen. “Miss Millicent,” he repeated puzzled.

“She is waiting in the hall and would like to see you. She asked for Miss Derrick first, but Miss Derrick is out.”

He got up, his pulse beating hard, and came quickly into the hall. They glanced at each other, these two, drawn thus together by the shadow of a crime. Instinctively she held out her hand, feeling for a strange moment almost as though no introduction was necessary.

“How do you do, Miss Millicent? My sister will be very sorry to miss you. Will you come into the living-room or”—he hesitated an instant—“the study?”

“I won’t keep you a moment,” she said a little nervously. “Are you working in the study?”

He nodded, smiling. “I think it’s a wonderful room. Please come in.”

He followed her in, while Perkins, after a lingering glance, closed the door. Jean took a big chair by the fireplace, and for a moment neither spoke. Then she saw the manuscript littering the desk.

“I’m so afraid I’ve interrupted you.”

He shook his head ruefully. “What I was writing, or trying to write, is all the better for being interrupted. And,” he added, “we have been hoping to meet you and your mother.”

Again their eyes met. Derrick noted the smooth oval of her face and the sensitive curve of her lips. Her expression suggested imagination, a mind at once alert and subjective. She was looking now at her father’s portrait, and he saw the resemblance between these two. And, try as he might, he could not guess her thoughts or what brought her there. But something whispered that a Millicent was again in Beech Lodge.

“I did not know I was coming here to-day,” she said gravely, “not till mother and I came past the gates. Then I knew.”

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