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The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.

I assure you that the most winning 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 remarkable 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 more.

If my future were black, it was better surely to face it like a man than to attempt to brighten it by mere will-o'-the-wisps of the imagination.

It was half-past five before Holmes returned. He was bright, eager, and in excellent spirits, a mood which in his case alternated with fits of the blackest depression.

"There is no great mystery in this matter," he said, taking the cup of tea which I had poured out for him; "the facts appear to admit of only one explanation."

Chapter 3. In Quest of a Solution

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