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nails are most exquisitely manicured. Now, those two things contradict one another. Nails like that go with make-up—quite a lot of it, in my opinion. But to stop using it is the best disguise a woman can adopt. I’m quite sure that nobody who knows her with it would recognise her as she is at present.”
    “Not even with those eyes?” Dr. Rob suggested, shading his own eyes with his hand. “They’re very unusual, you know.”
    “Yes,” Miss Coates acknowledged. “They are, of course. But if I’m right about the make-up, then she would certainly use eye-shadow—probably green. But quite likely, just because green eyes are so unusual, most people, unless they were face to face with her, would conclude that her eyes were no more than greenish-blue, and that she was deliberately emphasising the green to make a gimmick out of the unusual. You see what I meant when I said I was trying to make things fit,” she added wryly.
    “Well, as a mere man, I don’t feel I can criticise your reasoning. I’m frankly out of my depth. But your suspicions were at least confirmed by her own admission later. Let’s go on from there.”
    “I’ll try to remember as nearly word for word as I can,” Miss Coates promised, and after a brief interval, with her eyes fixed unseeingly ahead of her, she delved back into the recent past.
    Dr. Rob listened attentively, once or twice looking at her with keen, half-closed eyes as she made some point or other. “So we know that she’s doing work that she doesn’t enjoy and is both living with and working for a woman who can see no other point of view than her own.”
    “You’re quicker on the uptake than anyone else I know, man or woman,” Miss Coates declared appreciatively. “I suppose it comes from sorting the grain from the chaff when your patients tell you their symptoms! Anything else?”
    “By the way in which Rosamund referred to the wrong sort of publicity, it surely means that there is a right sort. In other words, that good advertisement is essential to— whatever sort of activity is involved.” He looked questioningly at his companion, who nodded without speaking. Clearly that was not the only conclusion she wanted him to draw.
    Dr. Rob pursed his lips thoughtfully.
    “Yes. You made a correction in repeating something Rosamund said. First of all, you reported her as having said that she didn’t think her —and then altered it to she. Whose correction, Rosamund’s or yours?”
    “Hers.”
    “H’m! ' I don't think my —’ Now, what did she nearly say? It would fit in if it was some group name for a special type of relative, wouldn’t it? I think we can dismiss the possibility of it being ‘mother’. There is a certain sentiment about avoiding such criticism. So—an older sister, do you think?”
    "Possibly,” Miss Coates admitted, but without enthusiasm.
    'But that doesn’t fit into your pattern?” Dr. Rob asked faintly. “Cousin? Or aunt?”
    "It could be,” Miss Coates said, still in that non-committal way.
    "But you’re still determined not to put ideas into my head?” Dr. Rob touched her hand gently. “You’re a woman in a thousand, Alice. In such circumstances most members of your sex would resent me doing any thinking my own, because a woman’s intuition is never at fault!”
    "It isn’t very often,” Miss Coates said dryly. “Well, next?”
    "Well, next, my dear, is that you’re withholding a vital portion of information, aren’t you?”
    "Am I?"
    "Oh yes, that is if you know it. What’s the child’s surname?”
    "Hastings,” Miss Coates said briefly.
    Dr. Rob stood up and walked to the side of the boat. His back was towards Miss Coates, but' she could see that as gripping the rail so tightly that his knuckles stood out white. Her eyes very tender, she waited in silence for him to speak.
    "So it would seem to be possible that your little waif is my daughter!” he said at length in a deeply moved voice.
     
    "That's how it seems to me,”