u say that," I cried, "when her admittance here was due to a
young man who let her in at midnight with a key, and then left her to
eat out her heart in this great house all alone."

I have made sensations in my life, but never quite so marked a one as
this. In an instant every eye was on me, with the exception of the
detective's. His was on the figure crowning the newel-post, and
bitterly severe his gaze was too, though it immediately grew wary as the
young man started towards me and impetuously demanded:

"Who talks like that? Why, it's Miss Butterworth. Madam, I fear I did
not fully understand what you said."

Whereupon I repeated my words, this time very quietly but clearly, while
Mr. Gryce continued to frown at the bronze figure he had taken into his
confidence. When I had finished, Mr. Van Burnam's countenance had
changed, so had his manner. He held himself as erect as before, but not
with as much bravado. He showed haste and impatience also, but not the
same kind of haste and not quite the same kind of impatience. The
corners of Mr. Gryce's mouth betrayed that he noted this change, but he
did not turn away from the newel-post.

"This is a remarkable circumstance which you have just told me,"
observed Mr. Van Burnam, with the first bow I had ever received from
him. "I don't know what to think of it. But I still hold that it's some
thief. Killed, did you say? Really dead? Well, I'd have given five
hundred dollars not to have had it happen in this house."

He had been moving towards the parlor door, and he now entered it.
Instantly Mr. Gryce was by his side.

"Are they going to close the door?" I whispered to the reporter, who was
taking this all in equally with myself.

"I'm afraid so," he muttered.

And they did. Mr. Gryce had evidently had enough of my interference, and
was resolved to shut me out, but I heard one word and caught one
glimpse of Mr. Van Burnam's face before the heavy door fell to. The word
was: "Oh, so bad as that! How can any one recognize her----" And the
glimpse--well, the glimpse proved to me that he was much more profoundly
agitated than he wished to appear, and any extraordinary agitation on
his part was certainly in direct contradiction to the very sentence he
was at that moment uttering.

IV.

SILAS VAN BURNAM.

"However much I may be needed at home, I I cannot reconcile it with my
sense of duty to leave just yet," I confided to the reporter, with what
I meant to be a