e to which I had driven by mistake the day
before. To our astonishment, there was a crowd before the door, and a
policeman with his back to it was guarding the entrance. The blinds were
all drawn down. The image of the pale lonely woman, sitting by her
little fire, whom I had disturbed the day before, came suddenly back to
me with a strange qualm.

"What is it?" I hurriedly asked a baker's boy, who was standing at an
area railing, rubbing his chin against the loaf he was waiting to
deliver. The boy grinned.

"It's murder!" he said, with relish. "Burgilars in the night. I've
supplied her reg'lar these two months. One quartern best white, one
half-quartern brown every morning, French rolls occasional; but it's all
up now." And he went off whistling a tune which all bakers' boys
whistled about that time, called "My Grandfather's Timepiece," or
something similar.

A second policeman came up the street at this moment, and from him I
learned all the little there was to know. The poor lady had not been
murdered, it seemed, but, being subject to heart complaint, had died in
the night of an acute attack, evidently brought on by fright. The maid,
the only other person in the house, sleeping as maids-of-all-work only
can, had heard nothing, and awoke in the morning to find her mistress
dead in her bed, with the window and door open. "Strangely enough," the
policeman added, "although nothing in the house had been touched, the
lock of an unused bedroom had been forced, and the room evidently
searched."

Poor Jane was quite overcome. She seemed convinced that it was only by a
special intervention of Providence that she had changed her house, and
that her successor had been sacrificed instead of herself.

"It might have been me!" she said over and over again that afternoon.

Wishing to give a turn to her thoughts, I began to talk about Sir John's
legacy, in which she had evinced the greatest interest the night before,
and, greatly to her delight, showed her the jewels. I had not looked at
them since Sir John had given them to me, and I was myself astonished at
their magnificence, as I spread them out on the table under the
gas-lamp. Jane exhausted herself in admiration; but as I was putting
them away again, saying it was time for me to be dressing and going to
meet Carr, who was to join me at the Criterion, she begged me on no
account to take them with me, affirming that it would be much safer to
leave them at home. I was firm,