not
returned, and saw how greatly I was distressed. Yet he was far too
discreet a servant to refer to it.

I entered the drawing-room, and there, in the grey light, facing me,
stood the fine portrait of my well-beloved in a silver frame, the one
she had had taken at Scarborough a week after our marriage.

I drew it from its frame and gazed for a long time upon it. Then I put
it into an envelope, and placed it in my pocket.

Soon after ten o'clock I returned to the Coliseum, and showed the
portrait to a number of the attendants as that of a lady who was
missing. All of them, both male and female, gazed upon the picture,
but nobody recognized her as having been seen before.

The manager, whom I had seen on the previous night, sympathized with
me, and lent me every assistance. One after another of the staff he
called into his big office on the first floor, but the reply was
always the same.

At length a smart page-boy entered, and, on being shown the portrait,
at once said to the manager--

"Why, sir, that's the lady who went away with the gentleman who spoke
to me!"

"Who was he?" I demanded eagerly. "What did he say? What was he like?"

"Well, sir, it was like this," replied the boy. "About a quarter of an
hour before the curtain fell last night I was out in the vestibule,
when a tall dark gentleman, with his hair slightly grey and no
moustache, came up to me with a lady's cloak in his hand--a dark blue
one. He told me that when the audience came out a fair young lady
would come up to me for the cloak, as she wanted to get away very
quickly, and did not want to wait her turn at the cloak-room. There
was a car--a big grey car--waiting for her outside."

"Then her flight was all prepared!" I exclaimed. "What was the man
like?"

"He struck me as being a gentleman, yet his clothes seemed shabby and
ill-fitting. Indeed, he had a shabby-genteel look, as though he were a
bit down on his luck."

"He was in evening clothes?"

"No, sir. In a suit of brown tweeds."

"Well, what happened then?"

"I waited till the curtain fell, and then I stood close to the
box-office with the cloak over my arm. There was a big crush, as it
was then raining hard. Suddenly a young lady wearing a cream
theatre-wrap came up to me hastily, and asked me to help her on with
the cloak. This I did, and next moment the man in tweeds joined her. I
heard him say, 'Come along, dear, we haven't a moment to lose,' and
then they went out to the