The Twisted Root

smiled to himself as he described it. "There was a small boy rolling a hoop, and a puppy chasing a stick. I stopped and watched the dog. It was so full of life, bounding along with its tail wagging, and returning the stick, immensely pleased with itself. I found I was laughing at it. It was a little while before I realized it was a young woman who was throwing the stick. Once it landed almost at my feet, and I picked it up and threw it back again, just for the pleasure of watching. Of course, she and I fell into conversation. It all happened so naturally. I asked her about the dog, and she told me it actually belonged to a friend of hers."
    His eyes were far away, his memory sharp. "One subject of conversation led to another, and before I realized it I had been talking with her for nearly an hour. I made it my business to return the following day, and she was there again." He gave a very slight shrug of self-mockery. "I don’t suppose for a moment she thought it was chance, nor did I feel any inclination to pretend. There was never that between us. She seemed to perceive what I meant as naturally as if she had had the same thoughts and feelings herself. We laughed at the same things, or found them beautiful, or sad. I have never felt so totally at ease with anyone as I did with her."
    Monk tried to imagine it. It was certainly not as he had felt with Hester. Invigorated, tantalized, furious, amused, admiring, even awed, but not very often comfortable.
    No—that was not entirely true. Now that he had at last acknowledged to himself that he loved her, and had stopped trying to force her into the mold of the kind of woman he used to imagine he wanted, but accepted her more or less as herself, he was comfortable more often than he was not.
    And, of course, there had always been the times when they were engaged in the same cause. She had fought side by side with the courage and imagination, the compassion and tenacity, that he had seen in no other woman—no other person. Then it was a kind of companionship which even Lucius Stourbridge could not guess at.
    "And so your friendship progressed," he said, going on to summarize what must have followed. "In time you invited her to meet your family, and they also found her most likable."
    "Yes—indeed ..." Lucius agreed. He was about to continue but Monk interrupted him. He needed the information that might help in his efforts to find the missing woman, although he held little hope the outcome would prove happy for Lucius, or indeed for any of them. A woman would not flee from her prospective husband and his house, and remain gone for the space of several days without sending word, unless there was a profound problem which she could see no way of solving.
    "What do you know of Mrs. Gardiner’s first husband?" Monk asked.
    "I believe he was somewhat older than she," Lucius answered without hesitation. "A man in a moderate way of business, sufficient to leave her provided for, and with a good reputation and no debts of money or of honor." He said it firmly, willing Monk to believe him and accept the value of such things.
    Monk read within the omissions that the late Mr. Gardiner was also of a very much more ordinary background than Lucius Stourbridge, with his inherited lands and wealth, and his father’s outstanding military career. He would like to have known Miriam Gardiner’s personal background, whether she spoke and comported herself like a lady, whether she had the confidence to face the Stourbridge family or if she was secretly terrified of them. Was she afraid, every time she spoke, of betraying some inadequacy in herself? He could imagine it only too easily. He had been the country boy from a Northumbrian fishing village, down in London trying to play the gentleman. Funny, he only remembered that now, thinking of Miriam Gardiner also trying to escape from an ordinary background and fit in with a different class of person. Every time she sat at the table had she also worried about using the wrong implement or making a foolish observation, of being ignorant of current events or of knowing no one? But he could not ask Lucius such things. If Lucius were capable of seeing the answer, he would not now be staring at Monk so earnestly, his dark eyes full of hope.
    "I think I had better begin by visiting your home, Mr. Stourbridge," Monk said aloud. "I would like to see where the event happened which apparently distressed Mrs. Gardiner so much, and with your family’s