ind, blank eyes. In the
privacy of her own room, she expressed a free opinion of her countrymen,
conceiving them all in the guise of fevered, unquiet souls cast in the
mould of Mrs. Ilkington.

Divesting herself of her dinner-gown, she slipped into a negligee and
looked round for a book, meaning to read herself sleepy. In the course
of her search she happened to recognise her bandbox and conceive a
desire to reassure herself as to the becomingness of its contents.

The hat she found therein was becoming enough, even if it wasn't hers.
The mistake was easily apparent and excusable, considering the confusion
that had obtained on the pier at the time of their departure.

She wondered when Staff would learn the secret of his besetting mystery,
and wondered too why Alison had wished to make a mystery of it. The joke
was hardly apparent--though one's sense of American humour might well
have become dulled in several years of residence abroad.

Meanwhile, instinctively, Eleanor was trying on the hat before the long
mirror set in the door of the closet. She admitted to herself that she
looked astonishingly well in it. She was a sane and sensible young
woman, who knew that she was exceedingly good looking and was glad of it
in the same wholesome way that she was glad she had a good singing
voice. Very probably the hat was more of a piece with the somewhat
flamboyant if unimpeachable loveliness of Alison Landis; but it would
seem hard to find a hat better suited to set off the handsome, tall and
slightly pale girl that confronted Eleanor in the mirror.

It seemed surprisingly heavy, even for a hat of its tremendous size. She
was of the opinion that it would make her head ache to wear it for many
hours at a time. She was puzzled by its weight and speculated vaguely
about it until, lifting it carefully off, her fingers encountered
something hard, heavy and unyielding between the lining and the crown.
After that it didn't take her long to discover that the lining had been
ripped open and resewn with every indication of careless haste. Human
curiosity did the rest. Within a very few minutes the Cadogan collar lay
in her hands and she was marvelling over it--and hazily surmising the
truth: Staff had been used as a blind agent to get the pearls into the
country duty-free.

Quick thoughts ran riot in Eleanor's mind. Alison Landis would
certainly not delay longer than a few hours before demanding her hat of
Mr. Staff. The substituti