Mrs. Cunningham has an important story to tell, and I
thought you ought to hear it at once."

I bowed politely to the stranger, and awaited her disclosures.

Mrs. Cunningham was a pretty, frivolous-looking woman, with appealing
blue eyes, and a manner half-childish, half-apologetic.

I smiled involuntarily to see how nearly her appearance coincided
with the picture in my mind, and I greeted her almost as if she were a
previous acquaintance.

"I know I've done very wrong," she began, with a nervous little flutter
of her pretty hands; "but I'm ready now to 'fess up, as the children
say."

She looked at me, so sure of an answering smile, that I gave it, and
said,

"Let us hear your confession, Mrs. Cunningham; I doubt if it's a very
dreadful one."

"Well, you see," she went on, "that gold bag is mine."

"Yes," I said; "how did it get here?"

"I've no idea," she replied, and I could see that her shallow nature
fairly exulted in the sensation she was creating. "I went to New York
that night, to the theatre, and I carried my gold bag, and I left it in
the train when I got out at the station."

"West Sedgwick?" I asked.

"No; I live at Marathon Park, the next station to this."

"Next on the way to New York?"

"Yes. And when I got out of the train--I was with my husband and some
other people--we had been to a little theatre party--I missed the
bag. But I didn't tell Jack, because I knew he'd scold me for being so
careless. I thought I'd get it back from the Lost and Found Department,
and then, the very next day, I read in the paper about the--the--awful
accident, and it told about a gold bag being found here."

"You recognized it as yours?"

"Of course; for the paper described everything in it--even to the
cleaner's advertisement that I'd just cut out that very day."

"Why didn't you come and claim it at once?"

"Oh, Mr. Burroughs, you must know why I didn't! Why, I was scared 'most
to death to read the accounts of the terrible affair; and to mix in it,
myself--ugh! I couldn't dream of anything so horrible."

It was absurd, but I had a desire to shake the silly little bundle of
femininity who told this really important story, with the twitters and
simpers of a silly school-girl.

"And you would not have come, if I had not written you?"

She hesitated. "I think I should have come soon, even without your
letter."

"Why, Mrs. Cunningham?"

"Well, I kept it secret as long as I could, but yesterday Jack