It was Sydney; and it was he who was the thief. It was at this point that she dug her nails into the palms of her hands, and would have liked to tear her own heart out, and to have died.

It was Sydney who was the thief; it was his footstep she had heard hurrying past her room. By what odd chance had he not visited her? He had visited so many of the others. Could he have known which rooms it would be worth his while to visit, and which to leave alone?

Had he come to her--if he had!--with the leather bag in his hand, he would have found her still up. What a meeting that would have been!

It was not easy for her to reflect, but it was borne in upon her presently that this act of which he had been guilty was one of astounding daring. She had not gone to bed; others might have still been up; it was extraordinary that he had only gone to the rooms in which the people were asleep. How had he known--that they were asleep? The problem set her thinking.

She recalled the feeling she had had that she had not been the only person in the hall. If that was the case, who could that other person have been? It was not Sydney; she had distinctly heard him, as she believed, rushing from one of the rooms beyond. What had he been doing in there, and what was the explanation of the voice which, in its anguish, she had heard addressing him by name? Could it be he who had been quarrelling with Noel Draycott?

She did not dare to try to find an answer to that question; it had come upon her unawares--she did not dare to put it to herself again. She was a young woman of strong will--with all her might she put it from her. As it were, she passed her mind into another channel--she thought of the bag.

Two things occurred to her; the one was the almost uncanny feeling that she had had that she was being observed as she hid it in the chest; the other was a sudden hideous terror that if the bag was found, there might be something about it, in it, which would associate it with--its owner. This fear became all at once such a terrible, mastering obsession that it possessed her whole being; all else was banished from her tortured brain but that one thing--the bag. Suppose--suppose--something happened to the bag?

She would not risk it, she could not. The only chance she might have of getting it into her own keeping, where it would be safe, was--now. In the morning, in an hour or two, it would be too late. Servants would be about, then members of the household; she would never dare to go to that 

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