this time very cautiously.
What did the woman want? Not daring to give her a look, for these men
were only too ready to detect harm in everything I did, I gently drew my
skirt away and took a step aside, going on as if no interruption had
occurred. "Did I say persons? I should have said a man and a woman drove
up to the house and entered. I saw them from my window."

"You did?" murmured my interlocutor, whom I had by this time decided to
be a detective. "And this is the woman, I suppose?" he proceeded,
pointing to the poor creature lying before us.

"Why, yes, of course. Who else can she be? I did not see the lady's face
last night, but she was young and light on her feet, and ran up the
stoop gaily."

"And the man? Where is the man? I don't see him here."

"I am not surprised at that. He went very soon after he came, not ten
minutes after, I should say. That is what alarmed me and caused me to
have the house investigated. It did not seem natural or like any of the
Van Burnams to leave a woman to spend the night in so large a house
alone."

"You know the Van Burnams?"

"Not well. But that don't signify. I know what report says of them; they
are gentlemen."

"But Mr. Van Burnam is in Europe."

"He has two sons."

"Living here?"

"No; the unmarried one spends his nights at Long Branch, and the other
is with his wife somewhere in Connecticut."

"How did the young couple you saw get in last night? Was there any one
here to admit them?"

"No; the gentleman had a key."

"Ah, he had a key."

The tone in which this was said recurred to me afterwards, but at the
moment I was much more impressed by a peculiar sound I heard behind me,
something between a gasp and a click in the throat, which came I knew
from the scrub-woman, and which, odd and contradictory as it may appear,
struck me as an expression of satisfaction, though what there was in my
admission to give satisfaction to this poor creature I could not
conjecture. Moving so as to get a glimpse of her face, I went on with
the grim self-possession natural to my character:

"And when he came out he walked briskly away. The carriage had not
waited for him."

"Ah!" again muttered the gentleman, picking up one of the broken pieces
of china which lay haphazard about the floor, while I studied the
cleaner's face, which, to my amazement, gave evidences of a confusion of
emotions most unaccountable to me.

Mr. Gryce may have noticed this too, for he immediatel