I hadn't been so cheese-paring. You'll be witnesses, you two, of
our discovery. I'm glad Connie and I weren't alone when we found it out.
Something nasty might have been said."

"We'll back you up with pleasure," Knight replied. "What was the
miniature like? I wonder if we saw it when we were here the other day,
Anita? I remember these, but can't recall any other."

"Neither can I," returned Annesley. "But I am stupid about such things.
We saw so many--and passed so quickly."

"I wonder if Paul Van Vreck was here in disguise among the tourists?"
said Dick, beginning to laugh. "It would have been the one he'd have
chosen if he couldn't grab the lot."

"Oh, surely no one in the crowd could have cut a piece of glass out of a
cabinet and stolen a miniature without being seen!" Annesley cried.

"Dick is half in joke," Constance explained. "It would have been a
miracle, yet the servants are above suspicion. Those horrid trustees
never let me choose a new one without their interference. And, of
_course_ Dick didn't mean what he said about Mr. Van Vreck."

"Of course not. I understood that," Annesley excused herself, blushing
lest she had appeared obtuse.

"All the same, to carry on the joke, let's go into the octagon room
and see if the alleged Fragonard pictures have gone, too," said
Annesley-Seton. He led the way, turning on more light in the adjoining
room as he went; and, outdistancing the others, they heard him stammer,
"Good Lord!" before they were near enough to see what he saw.

"They aren't gone?" shrieked his wife, hurrying after him.

"One of them is."

In an instant the three had grouped behind him, where he stood staring at
an empty frame, between two others of the same pattern and size, charming
old frames twelve or fourteen inches square, within whose boundaries of
carved and gilded wood, nymphs held hands and danced.

"Are we _dreaming_ this?" gasped Constance.

"Thank Heaven we're not!" the husband answered. "The two paintings are on
wood, you see. So was the missing one. Someone has simply unfastened it
from the frame, and trusted to this being a dark, out-of-the-way corner,
not to have the theft noticed for hours or maybe days. By all that's
wonderful, here's _another_ insurance haul for me! What about the jade
Buddha in the Chinese room?"

They rushed back into the green drawing room, and so to the beautiful
Chinese room beyond, with its priceless lacquer tables and cabinets. In
one of these