of distant Gueldersdorp, and wonder whether anybody
there was thinking of her under the white stars or the drifting scud?...

But what was Trudi saying?

"The gracious one cannot have her boots."

"Why not?" asked Lady Hannah, with languid interest. Trudi struck the
blow.

"Because she has none."

"No boots? Well, then, the walking-shoes."

Trudi smiled all over her large face. This placidity should not long
endure.

"The gracious one has no shoes either. Boots and shoes--all have been
taken away. Nothing remains except the quilted bedroom slippers the
gracious one is wearing. And it is impossible to walk out in bedroom
slippers."

"I suppose it is." Lady Hannah yawned. "Well, suppose you go and look for
the boots. They may have been carried away by mistake, like----" She
wondered afresh what could have become of that transformation coiffure?

"There is no mistake." Trudi announced. "And--the gracious lady forgot her
little gun beneath her pillow this morning. That also is missing,"
volunteered Trudi, who had had her instructions and scrupulously acted up
to them.

"My revolver has been stolen?" Lady Hannah sprang from her chair, made
rapid search, and was convinced. The Browning revolver had been certainly
spirited away.

Red patches burned in her thin little face, and her round black eyes
regained some of their lost brightness. Nothing like a spice of excitement
for bringing you up to the mark. Just now she had felt positively mouldy,
and here she was, herself again.

"Nobody came into the room in the night. I sleep with the key round my
neck, and if they had opened the door with another, I should have awakened
on the instant. Nobody has been in the room to-day except the Frau
Kink"--you will remember that a German drummer's widow would naturally
converse in her defunct spouse's native language--"the Frau Kink, with the
coffee-tray. She did not come near the bed...." The suddenness and force
of the suspicion that shot up in Lady Hannah's mind lifted her up out of
her chair, and set her upon her feet. "It must have been you. Was it you?"

She looked hard at Trudi, and Trudi sank upon her bed and dissolved in
noisy weeping.

"Ach, the wickedness!" she moaned. "To suspect of such shamelessness a
poor young maiden brought up in honesty.... Ach, ach!"

But Lady Hannah went on:

"Yesterday morning, when you were so long in coming back with hot water,
and I opened the door and looked out into the passag