eve it was the first lie she had ever told in her hard,
conscientious old life. Was she right? I wondered. Had Miss Jane taken
the pearls, and if she had, why?

Wardrop had been taking a long walk; he got back about five, and as Miss
Letitia was in the middle of a diatribe against white undergarments for
colored children, Margery and he had a half-hour alone together. I had
known, of course, that it must come, but under the circumstances, with
my whole future existence at stake, I was vague as to whether it was
colored undergarments on white orphans or the other way round.

When I got away at last, I found Bella waiting for me in the hall. Her
eyes were red with crying, and she had a crumpled newspaper in her hand.
She broke down when she tried to speak, but I got the newspaper from
her, and she pointed with one work-hardened finger to a column on the
first page. It was the announcement of Mrs. Butler's tragic accident,
and the mystery that surrounded it. There was no mention of Schwartz.

"Is she--dead?" Bella choked out at last.

"Not yet, but there is very little hope."

Amid fresh tears and shakings of her heavy shoulders, as she sat in her
favorite place, on the stairs, Bella told me, briefly, that she had
lived with Mrs. Butler since she was sixteen, and had only left when the
husband's suicide had broken up the home. I could get nothing else out
of her, but gradually Bella's share in the mystery was coming to light.

Slowly, too--it was a new business for me--I was forming a theory of my
own. It was a strange one, but it seemed to fit the facts as I knew
them. With the story Wardrop told that afternoon came my first glimmer
of light.

He was looking better than he had when I saw him before, but the news of
Mrs. Butler's approaching death and the manner of her injury affected
him strangely. He had seen the paper, like Bella, and he turned on me
almost fiercely when I entered the library. Margery was in her old
position at the window, looking out, and I knew the despondent droop of
her shoulders.

"Is she conscious?" Wardrop asked eagerly, indicating the article in the
paper.

"No, not now--at least, it is not likely."

He looked relieved at that, but only for a moment. Then he began to pace
the room nervously, evidently debating some move. His next action showed
the development of a resolution, for he pushed forward two chairs for
Margery and myself.

"Sit down, both of you," he directed. "I've got a