st make my position perfectly plain.

"Only this. She was seen to pick up something from the driveway, where
no one else had succeeded in finding anything."

"She? When? Who saw her?"

"I can not answer all these questions at once," I smiled. "She was seen
to do this--no matter by whom,--during your passage from the carriage to
the stoop. As you preceded her, you naturally did not observe this
action, which was fortunate, perhaps, as you would scarcely have known
what to do or say about it."

"Yes I should," she retorted, with a most unexpected display of spirit.
"I should have asked her what she had found and I should have insisted
upon an answer. I love my friends, but I love the man I am to marry,
better." Here her voice fell and a most becoming blush suffused her
cheek.

"Quite right," I assented. "Now will you answer my former question? What
troubles Miss Glover? Can you tell me?"

"That I can not. I only know that she has been very silent ever since
she left the house. I thought her beautiful new dress would please her,
but it does not seem to. She has been unhappy and preoccupied all the
evening. She only roused a bit when Mr. Deane showed us the ruby and
said--Oh, I forgot!"

"What's that? What have you forgot?"

"What you said just now. I wouldn't add a word--"

"Pardon me!" I smilingly interrupted, looking as fatherly as I could,
"but you _have_ added this word and now you must tell me what it means.
You were going to say she showed interest in the extraordinary jewel
which Mr. Deane took from his pocket and--"

"In what he let fall about the expected reward. That is, she looked
eagerly at the ruby and sighed when he acknowledged that he expected it
to bring him five hundred dollars before midnight. But any girl of no
more means than she might do that. It would not be fair to lay too much
stress on a sigh."

"Is not Miss Glover wealthy? She wears a very expensive dress, I
observe."

"I know it and I have wondered a little at it, for her father is not
called very well off. But perhaps she bought it with her own money; I
know she has some; she is an artist in burnt wood."

I let the subject of Miss Glover's dress drop. I had heard enough to
satisfy me that my first theory was correct. This young woman,
beautifully dressed, and with a face from which the rounded lines of
early girlhood had not yet departed, held in her possession, probably
at this very moment, Mrs. Burton's magnificent jewel. But