t, great Scott! I'm no expert, yet
it strikes me these miniatures are something out of the ordinary!"

"Well, yes, they are," Annesley-Seton admitted, modestly. "That queer one
at the top is a Nicholas Hilliard. I believe he was the first of the
miniaturists. And the two just underneath are Samuel Coopers. They say he
stood at the head of the Englishmen. There are three Richard Cosways and
rather a nice Angelica Kauffmann."

"It was the Fragonard miniature Mr. Van Vreck liked best," put in
Constance. "It seems he painted only a few. And next, the Goya----"

"Good heavens! where is the Fragonard?" cried Dick, his eyes bulging
behind his pince-nez. "Surely it was here----"

"Oh, surely, yes!" panted his wife. "It was never anywhere else."

For an instant they were stricken into silence, both staring at a blank
space on the black velvet background where twenty-nine miniatures hung.
There was no doubt about it when they had reviewed the rows of little
painted faces. The Fragonard was gone.

"Stolen!" gasped Lady Annesley-Seton.

"Unless one of you, or some servant you trust with the key, is a
somnambulist," said Knight. "I don't see how it would pay a thief to
steal such a thing. It must be too well known. He couldn't dispose of
it--that is if he weren't a collector himself; and even then he could
never show it. But--by Jove!"

"What is it? What have you seen?" Annesley-Seton asked, sharply.

Knight pointed, without touching the cabinet. He had never come near
enough to do that. "It looks to me as if a square bit of glass had been
cut out on the side where the lost miniature must have hung," he said.
"I can't be sure, from where I stand, because the cabinet is too close
to the wall of the recess."

Dick Annesley-Seton thrust his arm into the space between green brocade
and glass, then slipped his hand through a neatly cut aperture just big
enough to admit its passage. With his hand in the square hole he could
reach the spot where the miniature had hung, and could have taken it off
the hook had it been there. But hook, as well as miniature, was missing.

"That settles it!" he exclaimed. "It _is_ a theft, and a clever one!
Strange we should find it out when I was demonstrating to you how much I
wished it would happen. Hurrah! That miniature alone is insured against
burglary for seven or eight hundred pounds. Nothing to what it's worth,
but a lot to pay a premium on, with the rest of the things besides. I
wish now