ever trusting me there alone. Yet as this very distrust was
suggestive, I put a good face on the matter and welcomed her company
with becoming alacrity. After all, I might gain more than I could
possibly lose by having her under my eye for a little longer. Strong as
was her self-control there were moments when the real woman showed
herself, and these moments were productive.

As we were passing out she paused to extinguish a lamp which was
slightly smoking,--I also thought she paused an instant to listen. At
all events her ears were turned toward the stairs down which there came
the murmur of two voices, one of them the little boy's.

"It is time Harry was asleep," she cried. "I promised to sing to him.
You won't be long, will you?"

"You need not be very long," was my significant retort. "I can not speak
for myself."

Was I playing with her curiosity or anxieties or whatever it was that
affected her? I hardly knew; I spoke as impulse directed and waited in
cold blood--or was it hot blood?--to see how she took it.

Carelessly enough, for she was a famous actress except when taken by
surprise. Checking an evident desire of calling out some direction up
stairs, she followed me to the door, remarking cheerfully, "You can not
be very long either; the place is not large enough."

My excuse--or rather the one I made to myself for thus returning to a
place I had seemingly exhausted, was this. In the quick turn I had made
in leaving on the former occasion, my foot had struck the edge of the
large rug nailed over the center of the floor, and unaccountably
loosened it. To rectify this mishap, and also to see how so slight a
shock could have lifted the large brass nails by which it had been held
down to the floor, seemed reason enough for my action. But how to draw
her attention to so insignificant a fact without incurring her ridicule
I could not decide in our brief passage back to the bungalow, and
consequently was greatly relieved when, upon opening the door and
turning my lantern on the scene, I discovered that in our absence the
rug had torn itself still farther free from the floor and now lay with
one of its corners well curled over--the corner farthest from the door
and nearest the divan where little Gwendolen had been lying when she was
lifted and carried away--where?

Mrs. Carew saw it too and cast me a startled look which I met with a
smile possibly as ambiguous as the feeling which prompted it.

"Who has been h