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“Mrs. Ripley,” he read out, “Mrs. Ripley of Burley Wood.”

“And where is Burley Wood?” asked Sir Charles.

“It is a village, Sir, six miles from Leamington,” replied the bookseller, and he gave some rough directions as to the road.

Sir Charles mounted his horse and cantered down the Parade. The sun was setting; he would for a something miss his supper; but he meant to see Burley Wood that day, and he would have just daylight enough for his purpose. As he entered the village, he caught up a labourer returning from the fields. Sir Charles drew rein beside him.

“Will you tell me, if you please, where Mrs. Ripley lives?”

The man looked up and grinned.

“In the churchyard,” said he.

“Do you mean she is dead?”

“No less.”

“When did she die?”

“Well, it may have been a month or two ago, or it may have been more.”

“Show me her grave and there’s a silver shilling in your pocket.”

The labourer led Fosbrook to a corner of the churchyard. Then upon a head-stone he read that Mary Ripley aged twenty-nine had died on December 7th. December the 7th thought Sir Charles, five days before Major Lashley died. Then he turned quickly to the labourer.

“Can you tell me when Mrs. Ripley was buried?”

“I can find out for another shilling.”

“You shall have it, man.”

The labourer hurried off, discovered the sexton, and came back. But instead of the civil gentleman he had left, he found now a man with a face of horror, and eyes that had seen appalling things. Sir Charles had remained in the churchyard by the grave, he had looked about him from one to the other of the mounds of turf, his imagination already stimulated had been quickened by what he had seen; he stood with the face of a Medusa.

“She was buried when?” he asked.

“On December the 11th,” replied the labourer.

Sir Charles showed no surprise. He stood very still for a moment, then he gave the man his two shillings, and walked to the gate where his horse was tied. Then he inquired the nearest way to the Quarry House, and he was pointed out a bridle-path running across fields to a hill. As he mounted he asked another question.

“Mr. Ripley is alive?”

“Yes.”

“It must be Mr. Ripley,” Sir Charles assured himself, as he rode through the dusk of the evening. “It must be … It must be …” until the words in his mind became a meaningless echo of his horse’s hoofs. He rode up the hill, left the bridle-path for the road, and suddenly, and long before he had expected, he saw beneath him the red square of the Quarry House and the smoke from its chimneys. He was on that very road up which he and Gibson Jerkley had looked that morning. Down that road, he had said, would come the man who knew how Major Lashley had disappeared, and within twelve hours down that road the man was coming. “But it must be Mr. Ripley,” he said to himself.

None the less he took occasion at supper to speak of his ride.

“I rode by Leamington to Burley Wood. I went into the churchyard.” Then he stopped, but as though the truth was meant to come to light, Resilda helped him out.

“I had a dear friend buried there not so long ago,” she said. “Father, you remember Mrs. Ripley.”

“I saw her grave this afternoon,” said Fosbrook, with his eyes upon Mr. Mardale. It might have been a mere accident, it was in any case a trifling thing, the mere shaking of a hand, the spilling of a spoonful of salt upon the table, but trifling things have their suggestions. He remembered that Resilda, when she had waked up on the night of December the 11th to find herself alone, had sought out her father, who was still up, and at work in the big drawing-room. He remembered too that the window of that room gave on to a terrace of grass. A man might go out by that window–aye and return without a soul but himself being the wiser.