dispatched kitchenward by Mrs.
Aliston, and Constance went up to her own rooms, thinking, as she went,
how best to defer a further interview with Mr. Belknap.

"I must take him the key myself," she muttered, as she moved about the
dressing room, and then a sudden thought came, and she moved quickly to
an open wardrobe, pulled down the dress she had worn on the previous
afternoon, and searched hurriedly in the pockets.

All at once a look of dismay overspread her features; again and again
she shook out the silken folds, again thrust her hands in the dainty
pockets, and fluttered her fingers among the intricacies of the
trimming. The thing she searched for was gone. Sybil Lamotte's strange
letter, the letter that was a trust not to be violated, was not to be
found.

Thoroughly distressed now, Constance renewed her search--about the
room--everywhere--in the most impossible places; but no letter.

Down stairs she went; and hopeless as was the chance of finding it
there, hunted in the drawing room and on the terrace.

She distinctly remembered placing it in her pocket, after receiving it
back from the hands of Doctor Heath; of bestowing it very carefully,
too.

Who had been in the drawing room since Doctor Heath? Mrs. Aliston; the
two detectives; herself. Who had seen her put the letter in her pocket?
Only Doctor Heath. Could it have dropped from her pocket? That seemed
impossible. Could he have removed it? That seemed impossible, too, and
very absurd. But what could she think, else? Then, she remembered what
he had said to the detective the night before, and all the mystery
surrounding his past. Hitherto, she had scoffed at the prying ones, and
advocated his perfect right to his own past and future, too. Now, she
felt her ignorance of aught concerning the life of Doctor Clifford
Heath, to be a deep personal injury. Hitherto, she had reasoned that his
past was something very simple, a commonplace of study, perhaps, and
self-building; for she, being an admirer of self-made men, had chosen to
believe him one of them. Now, she bounded straight to the conclusion
that Doctor Heath had a past--to conceal; and then she found herself
growing very angry, with him first, and herself afterward.

Why had he not presented his passports before seeking her favor? How had
he dared to make himself so much at home in her drawing room, with his
impertinent _insouciance_ and his Sultan airs? How had he gone about,
indifferent, independe