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Rh "What? You don't think that there is really anything serious between them?" said Mr. Flexen quickly.

"No, not really serious—at any rate, on Colonel Grey's part. You can hardly expect a man, recovering very slowly from three bad wounds and still crocked up, to fall in love, can you? Especially a man who, when he does fall in love, falls in love with the violence with which Grey is charged," said Mr. Manley.

"There is that," said Mr. Flexen. "But that wouldn't prevent Lady Loudwater from falling in love with Colonel Grey. And after the way her husband treated her, she must have needed something in the way of affection—badly."

"It's no good a woman falling in love with a man unless he falls in love with her," said Mr. Manley, in the tone of a philosopher. "Besides, women don't fall in love with men who are so feeble from illness as the Colonel seems to be. How can there be the attraction? She might, of course, want to mother him very keenly. But that's quite a different thing." He paused, then added in a tone of some anxiety: "I say, you're not trying to mix her up with the murder—if it was a murder?"

"I'm not trying to mix anybody up in it," said Mr. Flexen slowly. "But I don't mind telling you that it is growing quite a pretty problem, and to solve a problem you must have every factor in it.