"Ah!" she cried, in a great voice, "you will not have to wait, nor
Clement either. Here is the will! The children have come into their
own." And she fell at their feet in a dead faint.

"Where did you find it? Oh! where did you find it? I have waited a week
to know. When, after Carlos's sudden departure, I stood beside Clement's
death-bed and saw from the look he gave me that he could still feel and
understand, I told him that you had succeeded in your task and that all
was well with us. But I was not able to tell him how you had succeeded
or in what place the will had been found; and he died, unknowing. But we
may know, may we not, now that he is laid away and there is no more talk
of our leaving this house?"

Violet smiled, but very tenderly, and in a way not to offend the
mourner. They were sitting in the library--the great library which was
to remain in Clement's family after all--and it amused her to follow the
dreaming lady's glances as they ran in irrepressible curiosity over the
walls. Had Violet wished, she could have kept her secret forever. These
eyes would never have discovered it.

But she was of a sympathetic temperament, our Violet, so after a
moment's delay, during which she satisfied herself that little, if
anything, had been touched in the room since her departure from it a
week before, she quietly observed:

"You were right in persisting that you hid it in this room. It was here
I found it. Do you notice that photograph on the mantel which does not
stand exactly straight on its easel?"

"Yes."

"Supposing you take it down. You can reach it, can you not?"

"Oh, yes. But what--"

"Lift it down, dear Mrs. Quintard; and then turn it round and look at
its back."

Agitated and questioning, the lady did as she was bid, and at the first
glance gave a cry of surprise, if not of understanding. The square
of brown paper, acting as a backing to the picture, was slit across,
disclosing a similar one behind it which was still intact.

"Oh! was it hidden in here?" she asked.

"Very completely," assented Violet. "Pasted in out of sight by a lady
who amuses herself with mounting and framing photographs. Usually, she
is conscious of her work, but this time she performed her task in a
dream."

Mrs. Quintard was all amazement.

"I don't remember touching these pictures," she declared. "I never
should have remembered. You are a wonderful person, Miss Strange. How
came you to think these photographs might