e. I merely noticed a growing preoccupation in her manner and in her
attitude towards me, which changed perceptibly.

"I think, Bunny," she said to me one morning as I brought her marmalade
and toast, "that considering our relations to each other you should not
call me Henrietta. After all, you know, you are here primarily as my
butler, and there are some proprieties that should be observed even in
this Newport atmosphere."

"But," I protested, "am I no more than that? I am your partner, am I
not?"

"You are my business partner--not my social, Bunny," she said. "We must
not mix society and business. In this house I am mistress of the
situation; you are the butler--that is the precise condition, and I
think it well that hereafter you should recognize the real truth and
avoid over-familiarity by addressing me as Mrs. Van Raffles. If we
should ever open an office for our Burglary Company in New York or
elsewhere you may call me anything you please there. Here, however, you
must be governed by the etiquette of your environment. Let it be _Mrs._
Van Raffles hereafter."

"And is it to be Mr. Bunny?" I inquired, sarcastically.

Her response was a cold glance of the eye and a majestic sweep from the
room.

[Illustration: "HENRIETTE WAS TESTING THE FIFTY-THOUSAND-DOLLAR PIANO"]

That evening Colonel Scrappe called, ostensibly to look over the house
and as landlord to see if there was anything he could do to make it more
comfortable, and I, blind fool that I was for the moment, believed that
that was his real errand, and ventured to remind Henriette of the leak
in the roof, at which they both, I thought, exchanged amused glances,
and _he_ gravely mounted the stairs to the top of the house to look at
it. On our return, Henriette dismissed me and told me that she would not
require my services again during the evening. Even then my suspicions
were not aroused, although there was a dull, disturbed feeling about my
heart whose precise causes I could not define. I went to the club and
put in a miserable evening, returning home about midnight to discover
that Colonel Scrappe was still there. He was apparently giving the house
and its contents a thorough inspection, for when I arrived, Henriette
was testing the fifty-thousand-dollar piano in the drawing-room for him
with a brilliant rendering of "O Promise Me." What decision they reached
as to its tone and quality I never knew, for in spite of my hints on the
subject, Henriette n