efully confessed, like a needle in a haystack, was worse than never to
have found her.

The final curtain fell. He rose with the rest of the house, dejectedly
enough, let it be said, when, glancing at his feet, he saw one of the
small butterflies that had evidently fallen from her shoe. He almost
shouted. Cinderella had left her glass slipper at the ball, or what, in
this case symbolized it, and he had found it. He slipped it carefully
into his pocket and wasted no time in hastening home; but once in the
seclusion of his own apartment, he drew it forth and carefully examined
it. It was an exquisite trinket fashioned with infinite care and
perfectly conceived, with delicate threadlike antennae, wings so thin as
to be almost transparent, and ruby eyes. He smiled afresh with a kind of
triumphant satisfaction.

Before him stretched a vista of golden opportunities, for this valuable
and unique ornament must be returned. Naturally, it was a commission that
he could intrust to no one but himself. Any one would concede that; and
she, of course, in accepting it, would have to show a decent appreciation
of his good offices; and they would probably discover mutual friends or
acquaintances, or if they did not happen to possess such a thing as a
friend or even an acquaintance in common, he would find exercise for his
ingenuity by very speedily rectifying that difficulty. Either to invent
or to discover some kind of a mutual friend or acquaintance was a task to
which he felt himself fully equal, and with this comforting reflection
uppermost in his mind, Hayden finally composed himself to slumber. Only,
and this was his last conscious thought, he did wish she had looked
happier. She was like a flower, exactly like the violets that drooped
below the silver butterfly on her breast.

"Oh, faint, delicious, springtime violet!" But again--that little pang
was like a stab at his heart--he did wish that her sweet eyes had not
been touched with all regret.

CHAPTER III

Hayden wasted no time, the next morning, in putting an advertisement in
the "Lost and Found" columns of the various newspapers, signing his full
name and address. Two lagging days passed, and then, just as hope was
beginning to fade, he received a letter written in the third person,
stating with what seemed to him rather cruel succinctness, that if Mr.
Robert Hayden could find it convenient to be at the restaurant of the
Gildersleeve Hotel that evening, the owner