Was that the real reason of the agitation in which he, Bryce, had found Ransford a few moments after the discovery of the body?
There was plenty of time before him for the due solution of these mysteries, reflected Bryce--and for solving another problem which might possibly have some relationship to them--that of the exact connection between Ransford and his two wards.

Bryce, in telling Ransford that morning of what was being said amongst the tea-table circles of the old cathedral city, had purposely only told him half a tale.

He knew, and had known for months, that the society of the Close was greatly exercised over the position of the Ransford menage.

Ransford, a bachelor, a well-preserved, active, alert man who was certainly of no more than middle age and did not look his years, had come to Wrychester only a few years previously, and had never shown any signs of forsaking his single state.

No one had ever heard him mention his family or relations; then, suddenly, without warning, he had brought into his house Mary Bewery, a handsome young woman of nineteen, who was said to have only just left school, and her brother Richard, then a boy of sixteen, who had certainly been at a public school of repute and was entered at the famous Dean's School of Wrychester as soon as he came to his new home.