“Why argue?” returned Mr. Inspector in a comfortable sort of remonstrance; “ain’t it enough that I propose that you shall come along with me?”

“For what reason?”

“Lord bless my soul and body!” returned Mr. Inspector, “I wonder at it in a man of your education. Why argue?”

“What do you charge against me?”

“I wonder at you before a lady,” said Mr. Inspector, shaking his head reproachfully: “I wonder, brought up as you have been, you haven’t a more delicate mind! I charge you, then, with being some way concerned in the Harmon Murder. I don’t say whether before, or in, or after, the fact. I don’t say whether with having some knowledge of it that hasn’t come out.”

“You don’t surprise me. I foresaw your visit this afternoon.”

“Don’t!” said Mr. Inspector. “Why, why argue? It’s my duty to inform you that whatever you say, will be used against you.”

“I don’t think it will.”

“But I tell you it will,” said Mr. Inspector. “Now, having received the caution, do you still say that you foresaw my visit this afternoon?”

“Yes. And I will say something more, if you will step with me into the next room.”

With a reassuring kiss on the lips of the frightened Bella, her husband (to whom Mr. Inspector obligingly offered his arm), took up a candle, and withdrew with that gentleman. They were a full half-hour in conference. When they returned, Mr. Inspector looked considerably astonished.

“I have invited this worthy officer, my dear,” said John, “to make a short excursion with me in which you shall be a sharer. He will take something to eat and drink, I dare say, on your invitation, while you are getting your bonnet on.”

Mr. Inspector declined eating, but assented to the proposal of a glass of brandy and water. Mixing this cold, and pensively consuming it, he broke at intervals into such soliloquies as that he never did know such a move, that he never had been so gravelled, and that what a game was this to try the sort of stuff a man’s opinion of himself was made of! Concurrently with these comments, he more than once burst out a laughing, with the half-enjoying and half-piqued air of a man, who had given up a good conundrum, after much guessing, and been told the answer. Bella was so timid of him, that she noted these things in a half-shrinking, half-perceptive way, and similarly noted that there was a great change in his manner towards John. That coming-along-with-him deportment was now lost in long musing looks at John and at herself, and sometimes in slow heavy rubs of his hand across his forehead, as if he were ironing cut the creases which his deep pondering made there. He had had some coughing and whistling satellites secretly gravitating towards him about the premises, but they were now dismissed, and he eyed John as if he had meant to do him a public service, but had unfortunately been anticipated. Whether Bella might have noted anything more, if she had been less afraid of him, she could not determine; but it was all inexplicable to her, and not the faintest flash of the real state of the case broke in upon her mind. Mr. Inspector’s increased notice of herself, and knowing way of raising his eyebrows when their eyes by any chance met, as if he put the question “Don’t you see?” augmented her timidity, and, consequently, her perplexity. For all these reasons, when he and she and John, at towards nine o’clock of a winter evening went to London, and began driving from London Bridge, among low-lying water-side wharves and docks and strange places, Bella was in the state of a dreamer; perfectly unable to account for her being there, perfectly unable to forecast what would happen next, or whither she was going, or why; certain