"It was about that time this morning?"

"Yes, sir; maybe ten minutes after nine."

"Who took the mail?"

"I put it in the box here in the vestibule, as I always do," he said, and suited the action to the word.

I watched him as he walked away. So it had not been a letter which had caused Miss Lawrence's sudden panic. That reduced the possibilities to two. Either she had received a visitor or a telegram. I must endeavour to——

A voice at my elbow aroused me.

"Mrs. Lawrence wishes to see you, sir," it said.

I turned, to find standing beside me the woman who had brought the note to Mrs. Lawrence in the library—the woman whose attitude of malignant triumph had so startled me. I blessed the chance which made it possible for me to question her alone.

"Very well," I said. "Are you Mrs. Lawrence's maid?"

"No, sir; I'm Miss Marcia's maid."

"Ah!" I said, and permitted myself to look at her more closely. She was a woman apparently somewhat over thirty. She had very black hair and eyes, and her face, while not actually repellent, had in it a certain fierceness and hardness far from attractive. A fiery and emotional nature was evident in every line of it—a sinister nature, too, it seemed to me—and I remembered her as I had seen her standing in the library door, exulting in another's misery. I pictured her as the decorator had described her, sitting on the stair, grinning and biting her nails in a kind of infernal triumph. Why should Miss Lawrence have chosen such a woman to attend her? As I looked at her, I saw the folly of attempting to win her confidence—the whip was the only weapon that could touch her—and it must be wielded mercilessly.

"Mrs. Lawrence wishes to see you," she said again, and I fancied there was defiance in the eyes she turned upon me for the merest instant.

"In a moment. Was it you who found the note your mistress left for Mr. Curtiss?"

"Yes, sir," and she glanced at me again, this time with a quick suspicion.

"It was on her dressing-table, I believe?"

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