been no one with her at the time except her maid. Her maid! And I sat suddenly upright; I felt that I had found the key!

"It was your daughter's maid gave you this, Mrs. Lawrence?" I asked.

"Yes," she answered, turning toward me with a start which told me that she had again sunk into reverie. "She said she had just found it on Marcia's dresser."

"It's strange," I said, "that it wasn't found before this. You were in your daughter's room, I suppose, after she disappeared?"

"Yes; several times."

"And you didn't see this note?"

"No; I did not notice it."

"Is the maid an old servant?"

"Yes," she said; "Lucy has been in the family for many years."

"And you've always found her perfectly trustworthy?"

"I have no cause of complaint against her," she answered, and though her voice showed no sign of emotion, I saw a sudden trembling seize her and shake her convulsively for a moment. Was it fear? Was it anger? Was it——?

Curtiss saw it, too, and, attributing it to a very different cause, moved impatiently in his chair. I felt that I was hampered by these witnesses. I must get rid of them, if I was to have freedom of action—and without freedom of action I could do nothing.

I turned again to the sheet of paper in my hand and examined it with care. It was an ordinary linen, unruled. I held it to the light and tried to decipher the watermark, but only two letters were on the sheet, "Re." The remainder of the word had been cut away when the sheet was trimmed to its present size. It seemed to me scarcely to possess the quality which one would expect in Miss Lawrence's writing-paper. The writing was in a woman's hand, a little irregular; but haste and stress of emotion would account for that. As I examined the writing more closely, I thought the ink seemed strangely fresh—scarcely dry, in fact; and yet, if the maid's story were true, the note had been lying upon the dresser for nearly three hours. And lying there unnoticed!

"There's no doubt 

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