their right.

Violet glanced that way, then cast her looks up and down the hall in
which they stood.

"Do you know that you have not told me in whose house I am? Not hers, I
know. She lives in the city."

"And you are twelve miles from Harlem. Miss Strange, you are in the Van
Broecklyn mansion, famous enough you will acknowledge. Have you never
been here before?"

"I have been by here, but I recognized nothing in the dark. What an
exciting place for an investigation!"

"And Mr. Van Broecklyn? Have you never met him?"

"Once, when a child. He frightened me _then_."

"And may frighten you now; though I doubt it. Time has mellowed him.
Besides, I have prepared him for what might otherwise occasion him some
astonishment. Naturally he would not look for just the sort of lady
investigator I am about to introduce to him."

She smiled. Violet Strange was a very charming young woman, as well as a
keen prober of odd mysteries.

The meeting between herself and Miss Digby was a sympathetic one. After
the first inevitable shock which the latter felt at sight of the beauty
and fashionable appearance of the mysterious little being who was to
solve her difficulties, her glance, which under other circumstances
might have lingered unduly upon the piquant features and exquisite
dressing of the fairy-like figure before her, passed at once to Violet's
eyes in whose steady depths beamed an intelligence quite at odds with
the coquettish dimples which so often misled the casual observer in his
estimation of a character singularly subtle and well-poised.

As for the impression she herself made upon Violet--it was the same she
made upon everyone. No one could look long at Florence Digby and not
recognize the loftiness of her spirit and the generous nature of her
impulses. In person she was tall, and as she leaned to take Violet's
hand, the difference between them brought out the salient points in
each, to the great admiration of the one onlooker.

Meantime for all her interest in the case in hand, Violet could not help
casting a hurried look about her, in gratification of the curiosity
incited by her entrance into a house signalized from its foundation by
such a series of tragic events. The result was disappointing. The walls
were plain, the furniture simple. Nothing suggestive in either, unless
it was the fact that nothing was new, nothing modern. As it looked in
the days of Burr and Hamilton so it looked to-day, even to the rathe