“Do you know how vilely you’ve treated me?” she said, staring across the space at him. He averted his face.

Yet he answered, not without irony.

“I suppose so.”

“And why?” she cried. “I should like to know why.”

He did not answer. The way she rushed in made him go vague.

“Justify yourself. Say why you’ve been so vile to me. Say what you had against me,” she demanded.

“What I HAD against her,” he mused to himself: and he wondered that she used the past tense. He made no answer.

“Accuse me,” she insisted. “Say what I’ve done to make you treat me like this. Say it. it You must THINK it hard enough.”

“Nay,” he said. “I don’t think it.”

This speech, by which he merely meant that he did not trouble to formulate any injuries he had against her, puzzled her.

“Don’t come pretending you love me, NOW. It’s too late,” she said with contempt. Yet perhaps also hope.

“You might wait till I start pretending,” he said.

This enraged her.

“You vile creature! “she exclaimed. “Go! What have you come for?”

“To look at YOU,” he said sarcastically.

After a few minutes she began to cry, sobbing violently into her apron. And again his bowels stirred and boiled.

“What have I done! What have I I done! I don’t know what I’ve done that he should be like this to me,” she sobbed, into her apron. It was childish, and perhaps true. At least it was true from the childish part of her nature. He sat gloomy and uneasy.

She took the apron from her tear–stained face, and looked at him. It was true, in her moments of roused exposure she was a beautiful woman— a beautiful woman. At this moment, with her flushed, tear–stained, wilful distress, she was beautiful.

“Tell me,” she challenged. “Tell me! Tell me what I’ve done. Tell me what you have against me. Tell Tell me.”

Watching like a lynx, she saw the puzzled, hurt look in his face. Telling isn’t so easy—especially when the trouble goes too deep for conscious comprehension. He couldn’t tell what he had against her. And he had not the slightest intention of doing what she would have liked him to do, starting to pile up detailed grievances. He knew the detailed grievances were nothing in themselves.

“You CAN’T,” she cried vindictively. “You CAN’T. You CAN’T find anything real to bring against me, though you’d like to. You’d like to be able to accuse me of something, but you CAN’T, because you know know there isn’t anything.”

She watched him, watched. And he sat in the chair near the door, without moving.

“You’re unnatural, that’s what you are,” she cried. “You’re unnatural. You’re not a man. You haven’t got a man’s feelings. You’re nasty, and cold, and unnatural. And you’re a coward. You’re a coward. You run away from me, without telling me what you’ve got against me.”

“Who was he, then, and what was his object in deserting Miss Sutherland?”

The question was hardly out of my mouth, and Holmes had not yet opened his lips to reply, when we heard a heavy footfall in the passage and a a tap at the door.

“This is the girl’s stepfather, Mr. James Windibank,” said Holmes. “He has written to me to say that he would be here at six. Come in!”

The man who entered was a sturdy, middle-sized fellow, some thirty years of age, clean-shaven, and sallow-skinned, with a bland, insinuating manner, and a pair of wonderfully sharp and penetrating gray eyes. He shot a questioning glance at each of us, placed his shiny top-hat upon the sideboard, and with a slight bow sidled down into the nearest chair.

“Good-evening, Mr. James Windibank,” said Holmes. “I think that this typewritten letter is from you, you in which you made an appointment with me for six o’clock?”

“Yes, sir. I am afraid that I am a little late, but I am not quite my own master, you know. I am sorry that Miss Sutherland has troubled you about this little matter, for I think it is far better not to wash linen of the sort in public. It was quite against my wishes that she came, but she is a very excitable, impulsive girl, as you may have noticed, and she is not easily controlled when she has made up her mind on a point. Of course, I did not mind you so much, as you are not connected with the official police, but it is not pleasant to have a family misfortune like this noised abroad. Besides, it is a useless expense, for how could you possibly find this Hosmer Angel?”

“On the contrary,” said Holmes quietly; “I have every reason to believe that I will succeed in discovering Mr. Hosmer Angel.”

Mr. Windibank gave a violent start and dropped his gloves. “I am delighted to hear it,” he said.

“It is a curious thing,” remarked Holmes, “that a typewriter has really quite as much individuality as a man’s handwriting. Unless they are quite new, no two of them write exactly alike. Some letters get more worn than others, and some wear only on one side. Now, you remark in this note of yours, Mr. Windibank, that in every case there is some little slurring over of the ‘e,’ and a slight defect in the tail of the ‘r.’ There are fourteen other characteristics, but those are the more obvious.”

“We do all our correspondence with this machine at the office, and no doubt it is a little worn,” our visitor answered, glancing keenly at Holmes with his bright little eyes.

“And now I will show you what is really a very interesting study, Mr. Windibank,” Holmes continued. “I think of writing another little monograph some of these days on the typewriter and its relation to crime. It is a subject to which I have devoted some little attention. I have here four letters which purport to come from the missing man. They are all typewritten. In each case, not only are the ‘e’s’ slurred and the ‘r’s’ tailless, but you will observe, if you care to use my magnifying lens, that the fourteen other characteristics to which I have alluded are there as well.”