irst floor. When Mrs. Dixon came back that night, she discovered
that Mrs. Melrose, with her child and maid had quitted the house. They
had apparently harnessed the cart and horse themselves, and had driven
into Pengarth, taking a labourer with them to bring the cart home. They
had carried all their personal belongings away with them; and, after a
while, Mrs. Dixon, poking about, discovered that the door of one of the
locked rooms had been forced.

She also noticed, in one of the open drawers of Mrs. Melrose's bedroom, a
photograph, evidently forgotten, lying face downward. Examining it, she
saw that it was a picture of Netta, with the baby, taken apparently in
Italy during the preceding summer. The Cumbrian woman, shrewdly observant
like all her race, was struck by the tragic differences between the woman
of the picture and the little blighted creature who had just made a
flitting from the Tower.

She showed the photograph to her husband, returned it to the drawer, and
thought no more about it.

News was of course sent to Mr. Melrose in Paris, and within three days he
had come rushing back to the Tower, beside himself with rage and grief,
not at all, as George Tyson soon assured himself, for the loss of his
wife and child, but entirely for the theft of the priceless Florentine
bronze, a loss which he had suspected on the first receipt of the news of
the forced door, and verified at once on his arrival.

He stood positively aghast at Netta's perfidy and wickedness, and he
wrote at once to the apartment in the Via Giugno, to denounce her in the
most emphatic terms. As she had chosen to steal one of his most precious
possessions, which she had of course converted into money, she had no
further claim on him whatever, and he broke off all relations with her.
Eighty pounds a year would be paid by his lawyers to a Florentine lawyer,
whom he named, for his daughter's maintenance, so long as Netta left him
unmolested. But he desired to hear and see no more of persons who
reminded him of the most tragical event of his history as a collector, as
well as of the utter failure of his married life. Henceforth they were
strangers to each other, and she might arrange her future as she
pleased.

The letter was answered by Mrs. Robert Smeath in the third person, and
all communications ceased. As a matter of fact the Smeath family were
infinitely relieved by Melrose's letter, which showed that he did not
intend to take any police ste