as your mother to whom you were paying these last dutiful
rites, I took advantage of my position as detective to satisfy myself
that nothing wrong lay behind so mysterious a death and burial. Can you
blame me, Miss? Would I have been a man to trust if I had let such an
event as this go by unchallenged?"

She did not answer. She had heard but one sentence of all this long
speech.

"You saw my mother's coffin lowered? Where were you that you should see
that? In some of these dark passages, let in by I know not what traitor
to our peace of mind." And her eyes, which seemed to have grown almost
supernaturally large and bright under her emotions, turned slowly in
their sockets till they rested with something like doubtful accusation
upon mine. But not to remain there, for Mr. Gryce recalled them almost
instantly by this short, sharp negative.

"No, I was nearer than that. I lent my strength to this burial. If you
had thought to look under Mother Jane's hood, you would have seen what
would have forced these explanations then and there."

"And you----"

"I was Mother Jane for the nonce. Not from choice, Miss, but from
necessity. I was impersonating the old woman when your brother came to
the cottage. I could not give away my plans by refusing the task your
brother offered me."

"It is well." Lucetta had risen and was now standing by the side of
Loreen. "Such a secret as ours defies concealment. Even Providence takes
part against us. What you want to know we must tell, but I assure you it
has nothing to do with the business you profess to be chiefly interested
in--nothing at all."

"Then perhaps you and your sister will retire," said he. "Distracted as
you are by family griefs, I would not wish to add one iota to your
distress. This lady, whom you seem to regard with more or less favor as
friend or relative, will stay to see that no dishonor is paid to your
mother's remains. But your mother's face we must see, Miss Lucetta, if
only to lighten the explanations you will doubtless feel called upon to
make."

It was Loreen who answered this.

"If it must be," said she, "remember your own mother and deal reverently
with ours." Which entreaty and the way it was uttered, gave me my first
distinct conviction that these girls were speaking the truth, and that
the diminutive body we had come to unearth was that of Althea Knollys,
whose fairy-like form I had so long supposed commingled with foreign
soil.

The thought was alm