hall was spacious and used as a lounge,
for there were several chairs clustered in its centre, opposite the
fireplace. There were two or three doors opening from it, and almost
opposite where he stood were the stairs, a broad flight leading to a
wide landing above.

Still with the same extreme silence and care, he began to ascend these
stairs and when he was about half-way up he became aware of a faint and
strange sound that came trembling through the silence and stillness of
the night.

What it was he could not imagine. He listened for a time and then
resumed his silent progress with even more care than previously, and
only when he reached the landing did he understand that this faint and
low sound he heard was caused by a woman weeping very softly in one of
the rooms near by.

Silently he crossed the landing in the direction whence the sound seemed
to come. Now, too, he saw a thread of light showing beneath a door at a
little distance, and when he crept up to it and listened he could hear
for certain that it was from within this room that there came the sound
of muffled, passionate weeping.

The door was closed, but he turned the handle so carefully that he made
not the least sound and very cautiously he began to push the door back,
the tiniest fraction of an inch at a time, so that even one watching
closely could never have said that it moved.

When, after a long time, during which the muffled weeping never ceased,
he had it open an inch or two, he leaned forward and peeped within.

It was a bed-chamber, and, crouching on the floor near the fireplace, in
front of a low arm-chair, her head hidden on her arms and resting on
the seat of the chair, was the figure of a girl. She had made no
preparations for retiring, and by the frock she wore Dunn recognized her
as the girl he had seen on the veranda bidding good-bye to John Clive.

The sound of her weeping was very pitiful, her attitude was full of an
utter and poignant despair, there was something touching in the extreme
in the utter abandonment to grief shown by this young and lovely
creature who seemed framed only for joy and laughter.

The stern features and hard eyes of the unseen watcher softened, then
all at once they grew like tempered steel again.

For on the mantlepiece, just above where the weeping girl crouched,
stood a photograph--the photograph of a young and good-looking,
gaily-smiling man. Across it, in a boyish and somewhat unformed hand,
was