ead her face.

"What can this mean?" she exclaimed, in a tone of alarm, as she dashed
it upon the floor and seized another.

This also proved disappointing.

"It was here the last time I looked! I am sure I left it on top of the
others!" she muttered, with white lips, as, with trembling hands and
heaving bosom, she overturned everything in search of the missing
document.

But the most rigid examination failed to reveal it, and, with a cry of
mingled agony and anger, she sank weak and trembling upon the nearest
chair.

"It is gone!" she whispered, hoarsely; "some one has stolen it!"

She sat there looking utterly helpless and wretched for a few
moments.

Then her eyes began to blaze and her lips to twitch spasmodically.

"He has done this!" she cried, starting to her feet once more. "That
was why he was absent so long from the ball-room to-night."

Seizing the papers she had removed from the box, she hastily replaced
them, also the cushion, restoring the jewels to their places, after
which she shut and locked the casket, taking care to remove the key
from its lock.

This done, she hurried from the room, looking more like a beautiful
fiend than a woman.

CHAPTER XVII.

"WOULD YOU DARE BE FALSE TO ME, AFTER ALL THESE YEARS?"

With her exquisite robe trailing unheeded after her, Anna Goddard
swept swiftly down the hall and rapped imperatively upon the door of
her husband's room.

There was no answer from within.

She tried the handle. The door would not yield--it was locked on the
inside.

"Gerald, are you in bed?" his wife inquired, putting her lips to the
crack and speaking low.

"What do you wish, Anna?" the man questioned.

"I wish to see you--I must speak with you, even if you have retired,"
she returned, imperatively.

There was a slight movement within the room, then the door was thrown
open, and Gerald Goddard stood before her.

But she shrank back almost immediately, a low exclamation of surprise
escaping her as she saw his face, so white, so pain-drawn, and
haggard.

"Gerald! what is the matter?" she demanded, forgetting, for the
moment, her own anger and even her errand there, in the anxiety which
she experienced for him.

"I am feeling quite well, Anna," he responded, in a mechanical tone.
"What is it you wish to say to me?"

Sweeping into the room, she closed the door after her, then confronted
him with accusing mien.

"What do I wish to say to you?" she repeated, her