Rosamond had tact enough to abstain from
saying anything more. The letter was written
exactly as Leonard dictated it. When it had
been placed in the post-bag, and when the
other letters of the morning had been read
and answered, Mr. Frankland reminded his
wife of the intention she had expressed at
breakfast-time of visiting the north garden,
and requested that she would take him there
with her. He candidly acknowledged that
since he had been made acquainted with
Doctor Chennery's letter, he would give five
times the sum demanded by Shrowl for the
copy of the Plan, if the Myrtle Room could
be discovered, without assistance from any
one, before the letter to the vicar's man of
business was put into the post. Nothing
would give him so much pleasure, he said, as
to be able to throw it into the fire, and to
send a plain refusal to treat for the Plan in
its place.

They went into the north garden, and
there Rosamond's own eyes convinced her that
she had not the slightest chance of discovering
any vestige of a myrtle-bed near any one of
the windows. From the garden they
returned to the house, and had the door
opened that led into the north hall.

They were shown the place on the pavement
where the keys had been found, and the place at
the top of the first flight of stairs where Mrs.
Jazeph had been discovered when the alarm
was given. At Mr. Frankland's suggestion,
the door of the room which immediately
fronted this spot was opened. It presented a
dreary spectacle of dust and dirt and
dimness. Some old pictures were piled against
one of the walls, some tattered chairs were
heaped together in the middle of the floor,
some broken china lay on the mantel-piece,
and a rotten cabinet, cracked through from
top to bottom, stood in one corner. These
few relics of the furnishing and fitting-up of
the room were all carefully examined, but
nothing of the smallest importance—nothing
tending in the most remote degree to clear
up the mystery of the Myrtle Room—was
discovered. Mr. Frankland next suggested
that there might be marks of footsteps on
the dusty floor of the landing, but nothing of
the sort could be found. Matting had been
laid down over the floor at some former
period, and the surface, torn, ragged, and
rotten with age, was too uneven in every
part to allow the dust to lie smoothly on it.
Here and there, where there was a hole
through to the boards of the landing, Mr.
Frankland's servant thought he detected
marks in the dust which might have been
produced by the toe or the heel of a shoe;
but these faint and doubtful indications lay
yards and yards apart from each other, and
to draw any conclusion of the slightest
importance from them was simply and plainly
impossible. After spending more than an
hour in examining the north side of the
house, Rosamond was obliged to confess that
the servants were right when they predicted,
on first opening the door into the hall, that
she would discover nothing.

"The letter must go, Lenny," she said,
when they returned to the breakfast-room.

"There is no help for it," answered her
husband. "Send away the post-bag, and let
us say no more about it."

The letter was despatched by that day's
post. In the remote position of  Porthgenna,
and in the unfinished state of the railroad at
that time, two days would elapse before an
answer from London could be reasonably
hoped for. Feeling that it would be better
for Rosamond if this period of suspense was
passed out of the house, Mr. Frankland
proposed to fill up the time by a little excursion
along the coast to some places famous for
their scenery, which would be likely to
interest his wife, and which she might occupy
herself pleasantly in describing on the spot
for the benefit of her blind husband. This
suggestion was immediately acted on. The
young couple left Porthgenna, and only
returned on the evening of the second day.

On the morning of the third day, the
longed-for letter from the vicar's man of
business lay on the table when Leonard and
Rosamond entered the breakfast room. Shrowl
had decided to accept Mr. Frankland's
condition—first, because he held that any man must
be out of his senses who refused a five-pound
note when it was offered to him; secondly,
because he believed that his master was too
absolutely dependent on him to turn him
away for any cause whatever. Accordingly,
the bargain had been struck in five minutes,
—and there was the copy of the Plan, enclosed
with the letter of explanation to attest the
fact!

Rosamond spread the all-important
document out on the table with trembling hands,
looked it over eagerly for a few moments,
and laid her finger on the square that
represented the position of the Myrtle Room.
"Here it is!" she cried. "O, Lenny, how
my heart beats! One, two, three, four—the
fourth door on the first floor landing is the
door of the Myrtle Room!"

She would have called at once for the keys
of the north rooms; but her husband insisted
on her waiting until she had composed herself
a little, and until she had taken some breakfast.
In spite of all he could say, the meal
was hurried over so rapidly, that in ten
minutes more his wife's arm was in his, and
she was leading him to the staircase.

The gardener's prognostication about the
weather had been verified: it had turned to
heat—heavy, misty, vaporous, dull heat. One
white quivering fog-cloud spread thinly over
all the heaven, rolled down seaward on the
horizon line, and dulled the sharp edges of
the distant moorland view. The sunlight
shone pale and trembling; the lightest highest
leaves of flowers at open windows were still;
the domestic animals lay about sleepily in