Yet what could it all mean?
How could she hope to benefit by such an association?
Why could she thus shield the murderers of Percival Coolidge?
What possible object could there be in the commission of this crime, except to gain possession of her own fortune?
It was all mystery to his mind; a new unanswerable question arising wherever he looked.
What strange influence could this man Hobart exercise over the girl?
To West's judgment he was in no way the sort of man to appeal to Natalie Coolidge.

He was of a low, cunning order, with some degree of outward polish, to be sure, yet inherently tough, and exhibiting marks of a birth-right which indelibly stamped him of a social class far below her own.

Surely, she could not love the fellow, yet unquestionably he possessed a mysterious power over her, difficult to explain through any other hypothesis.

If West had not known the young woman under different conditions, he might have accepted this theory, and dismissed the whole matter from mind.

But it was the haunting memory of that earlier Natalie Coolidge, the mistress of Fairlawn, which would not permit his complete surrender.