voice, the strange mystery which overhung her life. If she were
seventeen at the time of her father's disappearance she must be
seven-and-twenty now,--a sweet age, when youth has lost its self-
consciousness and become a little sobered by experience. So I
sat and mused, until such dangerous thoughts came into my head
that I hurried away to my desk and plunged furiously into the
latest treatise upon pathology. What was I, an army surgeon with
a weak leg and a weaker banking-account, that I should dare to
think of such things? She was a unit, a factor,--nothing more.
If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a
man than to attempt to brighten it by mere will-o'-the-wisps of
the imagination.



Chapter III
In Quest of a Solution



It was half-past five before Holmes returned. He was bright,
eager, and in excellent spirits,--a mood which in his case
alternated with fits of the blackest depression.

"There is no great mystery in this matter," he said, taking the
cup of tea which I had poured out for him. "The facts appear to
admit of only one explanation."

"What! you have solved it already?"