h your brother. But how about the key? You had that?"

"Yes, I had that."

"Then it was taken from you and returned? You must have been careless as
to where you kept it--"

"No, I wore it on a chain about my neck. Though I had no reason to
mistrust any one in the house, I felt that I could not guard this key
too carefully. I even kept it on at night. In fact it never left me. It
was still on my person when I went into the room with Mr. Delahunt. But
the safe had been opened for all that."

"There were two keys to it, then?"

"No; in giving me the key, my brother had strictly warned me not to lose
it, as it had no duplicate."

"Mrs. Quintard, have you a special confidant or maid?"

"Yes, my Hetty."

"How much did she know about this key?"

"Nothing, but that it didn't help the fit of my dress. Hetty has cared
for me for years. There's no more devoted woman in all New York, nor one
who can be more relied upon to tell the truth. She is so honest with her
tongue that I am bound to believe her even when she says--"

"What?"

"That it was I and nobody else who took the will out of the safe last
night. That she saw me come from my brother's room with a folded paper
in my hand, pass with it into the library, and come out again without
it. If this is so, then that will is somewhere in that great room. But
we've looked in every conceivable place except the shelves, where it
is useless to search. It would take days to go through them all, and
meanwhile Carlos--"

"We will not wait for Carlos. We will begin work at once. But just
one other question. How came Hetty to see you in your walk through the
rooms? Did she follow you?"

"Yes. It's--it's not the first time I have walked in my sleep. Last
night--but she will tell you. It's a painful subject to me. I will send
for her to meet us in the library."

"Where you believe this document to lie hidden?"

"Yes."

"I am anxious to see the room. It is upstairs, I believe."

"Yes."

She had risen and was moving rapidly toward the door. Violet eagerly
followed her.

Let us accompany her in her passage up the palatial stairway, and
realize the effect upon her of a splendour whose future ownership
possibly depended entirely upon herself.

It was a cold splendour. The merry voices of children were lacking in
these great halls. Death past and to come infused the air with solemnity
and mocked the pomp which yet appeared so much a part of the life here
that one could h