His lamp was burning when Mitchington and Jettison came in view of his windows--but that night Bryce was doing no thinking about statecraft: his mind was fixed on his own affairs.

He had lighted his fire on going home and for an hour had sat with his legs stretched out on the fender, carefully weighing things up.

The event of the night had convinced him that he was at a critical phase of his present adventure, and it behoved him, as a good general, to review his forces.
The forestalling of his plans about the hiding-place in Paradise had upset Bryce's schemes--he had figured on being able to turn that secret, whatever it was, to his own advantage.

It struck him now, as he meditated, that he had never known exactly what he expected to get out of that secret--but he had hoped that it would have been something which would make a few more considerable and tightly-strung meshes in the net which he was endeavouring to weave around Ransford.

Now he was faced by the fact that it was not going to yield anything in the way of help--it was a secret no longer, and it had yielded nothing beyond the mere knowledge that John Braden, who was in reality John Brake, had carried the secret to Warchester--to reveal it in the proper quarter.