Not that there was anything strange in Archie's procuring such garments, since he may have wanted them to clothe a model with.

But he could easily have got such things from his landlady, or, if from Widow Anne, could have borrowed them direct without appealing to Sidney.

Why, then, had the dead man acted as an intermediate party?
This question was hard to answer, yet Lucy greatly wished for a reply, since she suddenly remembered how a woman in a dark dress and with a dark shawl over her head had been seen by Eliza Flight, the housemaid of the Sailor's Rest, talking to Bolton through the window.

Were the garments borrowed as a disguise, and did the person who had borrowed them desire that it should be supposed that Widow Anne was talking to her son?
There was a chill hand clutching Lucy's heart as she went home, for the words of Mrs.Bolton seemed indirectly to implicate Hope in the mystery.

She determined to ask him about the matter straight out, when he came in that night to pay his usual visit.
At dinner the Professor was in excellent spirits, and actually became so human as to compliment Lucy on her housekeeping.