side; and--smell," he
added, as she took it from him. "Even the odour of the sulphur matches
cannot smother the quaint old perfume, distilled perhaps three
centuries ago."

An hour later Corthell left her. She did not follow him further than
the threshold of the room, but let him find his way to the front door
alone.

When he had gone she returned to the room, and for a little while sat
in her accustomed place by the window overlooking the park and the
lake. Very soon after Corthell's departure she heard Page, Landry
Court, and Mrs. Wessels come in; then at length rousing from her
reverie she prepared for bed. But, as she passed the round mahogany
table, on her way to her bedroom, she was aware of a little object
lying upon it, near to where she had sat.

"Oh, he forgot it," she murmured, as she picked up Corthell's
heart-shaped match box. She glanced at it a moment, indifferently; but
her mind was full of other things. She laid it down again upon the
table, and going on to her own room, went to bed.

Jadwin did not come home that night, and in the morning Laura presided
at breakfast table in his place. Landry Court, Page, and Aunt Wess'
were there; for occasionally nowadays, when the trio went to one of
their interminable concerts or lectures, Landry stayed over night at
the house.

"Any message for your husband, Mrs. Jadwin?" inquired Landry, as he
prepared to go down town after breakfast. "I always see him in Mr.
Gretry's office the first thing. Any message for him?"

"No," answered Laura, simply.

"Oh, by the way," spoke up Aunt Wess', "we met that Mr. Corthell on the
corner last night, just as he was leaving. I was real sorry not to get
home here before he left. I've never heard him play on that big organ,
and I've been wanting to for ever so long. I hurried home last night,
hoping I might have caught him before he left. I was regularly
disappointed."

"That's too bad," murmured Laura, and then, for obscure reasons, she
had the stupidity to add: "And we were in the art gallery the whole
evening. He played beautifully."

Towards eleven o'clock that morning Laura took her usual ride, but she
had not been away from the house quite an hour before she turned back.

All at once she had remembered something. She returned homeward, now
urging Crusader to a flying gallop, now curbing him to his slowest
ambling walk. That which had so abruptly presented itself to her mind
was the fact that Corthell's match box-