-his name engraved across its
front--still lay in plain sight upon the table in her sitting-room--the
peculiar and particular place of her privacy.

It was so much her own, this room, that she had given orders that the
servants were to ignore it in their day's routine. She looked after its
order herself. Yet, for all that, the maids or the housekeeper often
passed through it, on their way to the suite beyond, and occasionally
Page or Aunt Wess' came there to read, in her absence. The family spoke
of the place sometimes as the "upstairs sitting-room," sometimes simply
as "Laura's room."

Now, as she cantered homeward, Laura had it vividly in her mind that
she had not so much as glanced at the room before leaving the house
that morning. The servants would not touch the place. But it was quite
possible that Aunt Wess' or Page--

Laura, the blood mounting to her forehead, struck the horse sharply
with her crop. The pettiness of the predicament, the small meanness of
her situation struck across her face like the flagellations of tiny
whips. That she should stoop to this! She who had held her head so high.

Abruptly she reined in the horse again. No, she would not hurry.
Exercising all her self-control, she went on her way with deliberate
slowness, so that it was past twelve o'clock when she dismounted under
the carriage porch.

Her fingers clutched tightly about her crop, she mounted to her
sitting-room and entered, closing the door behind her.

She went directly to the table, and then, catching her breath, with a
quick, apprehensive sinking of the heart, stopped short. The little
heart-shaped match box was gone, and on the couch in the corner of the
room Page, her book fallen to the floor beside her, lay curled up and
asleep.

A loop of her riding-habit over her arm, the toe of her boot tapping
the floor nervously, Laura stood motionless in the centre of the room,
her lips tight pressed, the fingers of one gloved hand drumming rapidly
upon her riding-crop. She was bewildered, and an anxiety cruelly
poignant, a dread of something she could not name, gripped suddenly at
her throat.

Could she have been mistaken? Was it upon the table that she had seen
the match box after all? If it lay elsewhere about the room, she must
find it at once. Never had she felt so degraded as now, when, moving
with such softness and swiftness as she could in her agitation command,
she went here and there about the room, peering into the c