r, with eyes
downcast as though thinking deeply. Then she will suddenly start up
and cry, 'Ah! I see--I see--yes--that terrible red, green and gold!
Oh! it's horrible--bewildering--fascinating--red, green and gold!'
The three colours seem to obsess her always at nightfall. That is what
Doctor Moroni told me."

I paused for a few moments.

"You've never heard her speak of Mr. De Gex? You're quite sure?"

"Quite," was Mrs. Alford's reply. "My young mistress was studying
singing at the Royal Academy of Music. Hark! You hear her now! Has she
not a beautiful voice? Ah, sir--it is all a great tragedy! It has
broken her mother's heart. Only to think that to-day the poor girl is
without memory, and her brain is entirely unbalanced. 'Red, green and
gold' is all that seems to matter to her. And whenever she recollects
it and the words escape her drawn lips she seems petrified by horror."

What the woman told me was, I realized, the actual truth. And yet when
I recollected that I had seen the dark-eyed victim lying dead in that
spacious room in the house of Mr. De Gex in Stretton Street, I became
utterly bewildered. I had seen her dead there. I had held a mirror to
her half-open lips and it had not become clouded. Yet in my ears there
now sounded the sweet tuneful strains of that bird-song from "Joy
Bells."

Truly, the unfortunate girl possessed a glorious voice, which would
make a fortune upon the concert platform or the stage.

I did my level best to obtain more information concerning the Italian
doctor and the man De Gex, but the woman could tell me absolutely
nothing. She was concealing nothing from me--that I knew.

It was only when I mentioned the French banker, Monsieur Suzor, that
she started and became visibly perturbed.

"I have no knowledge of the gentleman," she declared. Yet had I not
seen them together in Kensington Gardens?

"I don't know whether he is known to you as Suzor," I said. Then I
described him as accurately as I could.

But the woman shook her head. For the first time she now lied to me.
With my own eyes I had seen the man approach her and the girl, and
after they had greeted each other, she had risen and left the girl
alone with him.

Curiously enough when the pair were alone together they seemed to
understand each other. I recollected it all most vividly.

To say the least it was strange why, being so frank upon other
details, she so strenuously denied all knowledge of the affable
French