re, ma'am," she
cried, "you must think very poorly of us. But I assure you, ma'am, it's
honest poverty, nothing but honest poverty as makes them so neglectful,"
and with an air as far removed from mystery as her frank, good-natured
manner seemed to be from falsehood, she slid from the room with a kind:

"Don't hurry, ma'am. It is Miss Knollys' turn in the kitchen, and she
isn't as quick as Miss Lucetta."

"Humph," thought I, "supposing I had called in the police."

But by the time she had returned with the water, my doubts had
reawakened. She was not changed in manner, though I have no doubt she
had recounted all that I had said, below, but I was, for I remembered
the matches and thought I saw a way of tripping her up in her
self-complacency.

Just as she was leaving me for the second time I called her back.

"What is the matter with your matches?" I asked. "I couldn't make them
light last night."

With a wholly undisturbed countenance she turned toward the bureau and
took up the china trinket that held the few remaining matches I had not
scraped on the piece of sandpaper I myself had fastened up alongside the
door. A sheepish cry of dismay at once escaped her.

"Why, these are old matches!" she declared, showing me the box in which
a half-dozen or so burned matches stood with their burned tops all
turned down.

"I thought they were all right. I'm afraid we are a little short of
matches."

I did not like to tell her what I thought about it, but it made me
doubly anxious to join the young ladies at breakfast and judge for
myself from their conduct and expression if I had been deceived by my
own fears into taking for realities the phantasies of a nightmare, or
whether I was correct in ascribing to fact that episode of the key with
all the possibilities that lay behind it.

I did not let my anxiety, however, stand in the way of my duty. Mr.
Gryce had bid me carry the whistle he had sent me constantly about my
person, and I felt that he would have the right to reproach me if I left
my room without making some endeavor to recover this lost article. How
to do this without aid or appliances of any kind was a problem. I knew
where it was, but I could not see it, much less reach it. Besides, they
were waiting for me--never a pleasant thought. It occurred to me that I
might lower into the hole a lighted candle hung by a string.

Looking over my effects, I chose out a hairpin, a candle, and two corset
laces, (Pardon