Dorothy kept silent for some little time. Then she said: "I always answer with all the greater precision if full confidence is placed in me. If there are any reservations, if the question is not put as it ought to be...." "What reservations? I assure you, mademoiselle----" The young girl broke in firmly: "You asked me the question, madame, as if you were giving way to a sudden curiosity, which did not rest, so to speak, on any real base. Now you know as well as I do that excavations have been made in the château."

"That's very possible," said Count Octave. "But if they were, it must have been dozens of years ago, in the time of my father or grandfather." "There are recent excavations," Dorothy asserted. "But we have only been living in the château a month!" "It isn't a matter of a month, but of some days ... of some hours...."

The Countess declared with animation: "I assure you, mademoiselle, that we have not made researches of any kind." "Then the researches must have been made by some one else." "By whom? And under what conditions? And in what spot?" There was another silence. Then Dorothy went on: "You will excuse me, madame, if I have been going into matters which do not seem to be any business of mine. It's one of my faults. Saint-Quentin often says to me: 'Your craze for trespassing and ferreting about everywhere will lead people to say unpleasant things about you.' But it happened that, on arriving here, since we had to wait for the hour of the performance, I took a walk. I wandered right and left, looking at things, and in the end I made a certain number of observations which, as it seemed to me, are of some importance. Thus...."

The Count and Countess drew nearer in their eagerness to hear her. She went on: "Thus, while I was admiring the beautiful old fountain in the court of honor, I was able to make sure that, all round it, holes have been dug under the marble basin which catches the water. Was the exploration profitable? I do not know. In any case, the earth has been put back into its place carefully, but not so well that one cannot see that the surface of the soil is raised."

The Count and his guests looked at one another in astonishment. One of them objected: "Perhaps they've been repairing the basin ... or been putting in a waste pipe?" "No," said the Countess in a tone of decision. "No one has touched that fountain. And, doubtless, mademoiselle, you discovered other traces of the same kind of work." "Yes," said Dorothy. "Some one has been doing the same thing a little distance away--under the rockery, the pedestal on which the 

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