ds.
"Let us first make sure I am the Yellow Domino who has been paraded
through the parlors this evening. Miss Benson, will you pardon me if I
presume to ask you what were the words of salutation with which you
greeted me to-night?"

"Oh!" she cried, in a tremble of doubt and dismay, "I do not know as I
can remember; something about being glad to see you, I believe, and my
hope that your plans for the evening might succeed."

"To which," said I, "I made no audible reply, but pressed your hand in
mine, with the certainty you were a _friend_ though you had not used the
word 'Counterfeit.'"

"Yes, yes," she returned, blushing and wildly disturbed, as she had
reason to be.

"And you, Uncle Joe," I went on; "what were your words? How did you
greet the man you had been told was your erring nephew?"

"I said: 'To counterfeit wrong when one is right, necessarily opens one
to a misunderstanding.'"

"To which ambiguous phrase I answered, as you will remember, with a
simple, 'That is true,' a reply by the way that seemed to arouse your
curiosity and lead to strange revelations."

"God defend us!" cried Uncle Joe.

The exclamation was enough. I turned to the trembling Edith.

"I shall not attempt," said I, "to repeat or ask you to repeat any
conversation which may have passed between us, for you will remember it
was too quickly interrupted by Mr. Benson for us to succeed in uttering
more than a dozen or so words. However, you will do me the kindness to
acknowledge your belief that I am the man who stood with you behind the
parlor curtains an hour ago."

"I will," she replied, with a haughty lift of her head that spoke more
loudly than her blushes.

"It only remains, then, for Mr. Benson to assure himself I am the person
who followed him to the closet. I know of no better way of his doing
this than to ask him if he remembers the injunctions which he was
pleased to give me, when he bestowed upon me this domino."

"No,--that is,--whatever they were, they were given to the man I
supposed to be my brother."

"Ha, then; it was to your _brother_," I rejoined, "you gave that hint
about the glass I would find on the library table; saying that if it did
not smell of wine I would know your father had not had his nightly
potion and would yet come to the library to drink it;--an intimation, as
all will acknowledge, which could have but the one result of leading me
to go to the table and take up the glass and look into it in the