y, without showing himself.

"Business in London," he repeated--as if he thought it highly important
to inform me of the nature of his errand. The door closed for the second
time. He was gone.

I went into my study, and carefully considered what had happened.

The result of my reflections is easily described. I determined on
discontinuing my relations with my senior pupil. In writing to his
father (which I did, with all due courtesy and respect, by that day's
post), I mentioned as my reason for arriving at this decision:--First,
that I had found it impossible to win the confidence of his son.
Secondly, that his son had that morning suddenly and mysteriously left
my house for London, and that I must decline accepting any further
responsibility toward him, as the necessary consequence.

I had put my letter in the post-bag, and was beginning to feel a little
easier after having written it, when my housekeeper appeared in the
study, with a very grave face, and with something hidden apparently in
her closed hand.

"Would you please look, sir, at what we have found in the gentleman's
bedroom, since he went away this morning?"

I knew the housekeeper to possess a woman's full share of that amicable
weakness of the sex which goes by the name of "Curiosity." I had also,
in various indirect ways, become aware that my senior pupil's strange
departure had largely increased the disposition among the women of my
household to regard him as the victim of an unhappy attachment. The time
was ripe, as it seemed to me, for checking any further gossip about him,
and any renewed attempts at prying into his affairs in his absence.

"Your only business in my pupil's bedroom," I said to the housekeeper,
"is to see that it is kept clean, and that it is properly aired. There
must be no interference, if you please, with his letters, or his papers,
or with anything else that he has left behind him. Put back directly
whatever you may have found in his room."

The housekeeper had her full share of a woman's temper as well as of a
woman's curiosity. She listened to me with a rising color, and a just
perceptible toss of the head.

"Must I put it back, sir, on the floor, between the bed and the wall?"
she inquired, with an ironical assumption of the humblest deference to
my wishes. "_That's_ where the girl found it when she was sweeping
the room. Anybody can see for themselves," pursued the housekeeper
indignantly, "that the poor gentleman has