I will set the sign of the cross upon my threshold, and thou shalt enter no more." This is what I said to myself as I tore open Charlotte's envelope, with its pretty little motto stamped on cream-coloured sealing-wax, "_Pensez a moi._" Ah, love; "while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe." I saw the eyes of my friend Horatio fixed upon me as I opened my letter, and knew that my innermost sentiments were under inspection.
Prudence demands all possible caution where the noble Captain is concerned.

I cannot bring myself to put implicit faith in his account of his business at Ullerton.

He may have been there, as he says, on some promoting spec; but our meeting in that town was, to say the least, a strange coincidence, and I am not a believer in coincidences--off the stage, where a gentleman invariably makes his appearance directly his friends begin to talk about him.
I cannot forget my conviction that Jonah Goodge was bought over by a rival investigator, and that Rebecca Haygarth's letters were tampered with; nor can I refrain from connecting that shapely but well-worn lavender glove with the person of my dandy friend, Horatio Paget.

The disappearance of a letter from the packet intrusted to me by Miss Judson is another mysterious circumstance; nor can I do away with the impression that I heard the name Meynell distinctly pronounced by Philip Sheldon the last time I was at the villa.
George Sheldon tells me the secret cannot by any possibility have been betrayed, unless by me; and I have been prudence itself.
Supposing my suspicions of Mr.Goodge to be correct, the letters extracted from Mrs.Rebecca's correspondence might tell much, and might even put Horatio on the track of the Meynells.

But how should he get his first inkling of the business?
Certainly not from me or from George Sheldon.