On the third day he put in a telegram that had evidently something of the same point as the stray sovereigns--a message that was in the first place concocted and that on a second thought he took back from her before she had stamped it.

He had given her time to read it and had only then bethought himself that he had better not send it.

If it was not to Lady Bradeen at Twindle--where she knew her ladyship then to be--this was because an address to Doctor Buzzard at Brickwood was just as good, with the added merit of its not giving away quite so much a person whom he had still, after all, in a manner to consider.

It was of course most complicated, only half lighted; but there was, discernibly enough, a scheme of communication in which Lady Bradeen at Twindle and Dr.Buzzard at Brickwood were, within limits, one and the same person.

The words he had shown her and then taken back consisted, at all events, of the brief but vivid phrase "Absolutely impossible." The point was not that she should transmit it; the point was just that she should see it.