voice quivering with
passion, her eyes blazing with a fierce expression. "I want that paper
which you have stolen from me."

"I--I do not understand you, Anna," the man began, in a pre-occupied
manner. "What paper--what--"

"I will bear no trifling," she passionately cried, interrupting him.
"You know very well what paper I refer to--I never had but one
document in my possession in which you had any interest; the one you
have so beset me about during the last few weeks."

"That?" exclaimed the man, at last aroused from the apathy which had
hitherto seemed to possess him.

"That!" retorted his companion, mockingly imitating his tone, "as if
you did not very well know it was 'that,' and no other. Gerald
Goddard, I have come to demand it of you," she went on shrilly. "You
have no right to enter my rooms, like a thief, and steal my treasures!
I--"

"Anna, be still!" commanded her husband, sternly. "You are losing
control of yourself, and some of our guests may overhear you. I know
nothing of the document."

"You lie!" hissed the woman, almost beside herself with mingled rage
and fear. "Who, but you, could have any interest in the thing? who,
save you, even knew of its existence, or that it had ever been in my
possession? Give it back to me! I will have it! It's my only
safeguard. You knew it, and you have stolen it, to make yourself
independent of me."

"Anna, you shall not demean either yourself or me by giving expression
to such unjust suspicions," Gerald Goddard returned with cold dignity.
"I swear to you that I do not know anything about the paper. I have
not even once laid my eyes upon it since you stole it from me. If it
has been taken from the place where you have kept it concealed," he
went on, "then other hands than mine have been guilty of the theft."

There was the ring of truth in his words, and she was forced to
believe him; yet there was a mystery about the affair which was beyond
her fathoming.

"Then who could have taken it," she gasped, growing ghastly white at
the thought of there being a third party to their secret--"who on
earth has done this thing?"

Gerald Goddard was silent. He had his suspicions, suspicions that made
him quake inwardly, as he thought of what might be the outcome of them
if they should prove to be true.

"Gerald, why do you not answer me?" his companion impatiently
demanded. "Can you think of any one who would be likely to rob us in
this way?"

"Have you no suspicion