That is exactly what I want to ask you."

  "Then we shall most certainly go -- you and I and -- yes. why
Dr. Watson is the very man. Your correspondent says two
friends. He and I have worked together before."

  "But would he come?" she asked with something appealing
in her voice and expression.

  "I shall be proud and happy," said I fervently, "if I can be of
any service."

  "You are both very kind," she answered. "I have led a
retired life and have no friends whom I could appeal to. If I am
here at six it will do, I suppose?"

  "You must not be later," said Holmes. "There. is one other
point, however. Is this handwriting the same as that upon the
pearl-box addresses?"

  "I have them here," she answered, producing half a dozen
pieces of paper.

  "You are certainly a model client. You have the correct
intuition. Let us see, now." He spread out the papers upon the
table and gave little darting glances from one to the other. "They
are disguised hands, except the letter," he said presently; "but
there can be no question as to the authorship. See how the
irrepressible Greek e will break out, and see the twirl of the final
s. They are undoubtedly by the same person. I should not like to
suggest false hopes, Miss Morstan, but is there any resemblance
between this hand and that of your father?"

  "Nothing could be more unlike."

  "I expected to hear you say so. We shall look out for you,
then, at six. Pray allow me to keep the papers. I may look into
the matter before then. It is only half-past three. Au revoir
then."

  "Au revoir," said our visitor; and with a bright, kindly glance
from one to the other of us, she replaced her pearl-box in her
bosom and hurried away.

  Standing at the window, I watched her walking briskly down
the street until the gray turban and white feather were but a speck
in the sombre crowd.

  "What a very attractive woman!" I exclaimed, turning to my
companion.

  He had lit his pipe again and was leaning back with drooping
eyelids. "Is she?" he said languidly; "I did not observe."

  "You really are an automaton -- a calculating machine," I
cried. "There is something positively inhuman in you at times."

  He smiled gently.

  "It is of the first importance," he cried, "not to allow your
judgment to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a
mere unit, a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are
antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most win-
ning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little
children for their insurance-money, and the most repellent man
of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a
quarter of a million upon the London poor."

  "In this case, however --"

  "I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule.
Have you ever had occasion to study character in handwriting?
What do you make of this fellow's scribble?"

  "It is legible and regular," I answered. "A man of business
habits and some force of character."

  Holmes shook his head.

  "Look at his long letters," he said. "They hardly rise above
the common herd. That d might be an a, and that I an e. Men of
character always differentiate their long letters, however illegibly
they may write. There is vacillation in his k's and self-esteem in
his capitals. I am going out now. I have some few references to
make. Let me recommend this book -- one of the most remark-
able ever penned. It is Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man. I
shall be back in an hour."

  I sat in the window with the volume in my hand, but my
thoughts were far from the daring speculations of the writer. My
mind ran upon our late visitor -- her smiles, the deep rich tones of
her 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