ng. But whose hands? That
is what I want you to discover."

I had caught the fever of her suspicions long before this and now felt
justified in showing my interest.

"First, let me ask," said I, "who has access to your rooms besides your
maid?"

"No one; absolutely no one."

"And what of her?"

"She is innocence herself. She is no common housemaid, but a girl my
mother brought up, who for love of me consents to do such work in the
household as my simple needs require."

"I should like to see her."

"There is no objection to your doing so; but you will gain nothing by
it. I have already talked the subject over with her a dozen times and
she is as much puzzled by it as I am myself. She says she cannot see how
any one could have found an entrance to my room during my sleep, as the
doors were all locked. Yet, as she very naturally observes, some one
must have done so, for she was in my bedroom herself just before I
returned from the theatre, and can swear, if necessary, that no such
slip of paper was to be seen on my cushion at that time, for her duties
led her directly to my bureau and kept her there for full five minutes."

"And you believed her?" I suggested.

"Implicitly."

"In what direction, then, do your suspicions turn?"

"Alas! in no direction. That is the trouble. I don't know whom to
mistrust. It was because I was told that you had the credit of seeing
light where others can see nothing but darkness that I have sought your
aid in this emergency. For the uncertainty surrounding this matter is
killing me and will make my sorrow quite unendurable if I cannot obtain
relief from it."

"I do not wonder," I began, struck by the note of truth in her tones.
"And I shall certainly do what I can for you. But before we go any
further, let us examine this scrap of newspaper and see what we can make
out of it."

I had already noted two or three points in connection with it to which I
now proceeded to direct her attention.

"Have you compared this notice," I pursued, "with such others as you
find every day in the papers?"

"No," was her eager answer. "Is it not like them all----"

"Read," was my quiet interruption. "'On this day at the Colonnade'--on
what day? The date is usually given in all the bona fide notices I have
seen."

"Is it?" she asked, her eyes, moist with unshed tears, opening widely in
her astonishment.

"Look in the papers on your return home and see. Then the print. Observe
that the ty