rated. "I knew that the minute Collins
began to speak. It explains everything--all the little queernesses I've
noticed ever since I came home--and everything."

"What is it?" Peter asked again. "Who's Collins? And what has he said?"

"It isn't a he; it's a she," Drusilla explained. "She's my maid. I knew
the minute I came into the room that she'd got something on her mind--I
knew it by the way she took my wrapper from the wardrobe and laid it on
the bed. It was too awful!"

"What was too awful? The way she laid your wrapper on the bed?"

"No; what she told me. And I _know_ it's true."

"Well, for the Lord's sake, Drusilla, what is it?"

Drusilla began to narrate. She had forborne, she said, to put any
questions till she was being "undone"; but in that attitude, favorable
for confidence, she had asked Collins over her shoulder if anything
troubled her, and Collins had told her tale. Briefly, it was to the
effect that some of the most distinguished kitchens in Boston and
Waverton had been divided into two factions, one pro and the other
contra, ever since the day, now three weeks ago, when Miss Maggie
Murphy, whose position of honorable service at Lawyer Benn's enabled her
to profit by the hints dropped at that eminent man's table, had
announced, in the servant's dining-room of Tory Hill itself, that Henry
Guion was "going to be put in jail." He had stolen Mrs. Clay's money,
and Mrs. Rodman's money, "and a lot of other payple's money, too," Miss
Murphy was able to affirm--clients for whom Guion, Maxwell & Guion had
long acted as trustees--and was now to be tried and sentenced, Lawyer
Benn himself being put in charge of the affair by the parties wronged.
Drusilla described the sinking of her own heart as these bits of
information were given her, though she had not failed to reprimand
Collins for the repetition of foolish gossip. This, it seemed, had put
Collins on her mettle in defense of her own order, and she had replied
that, if it came to that, m'm, the contents of the waste-paper baskets
at Tory Hill, though slightly damaged, had borne ample testimony to the
truth of the tale as Miss Maggie Murphy told it. If Mrs. Fane required
documentary evidence, Collins herself was in a position to supply it,
through the kindness of her colleagues in Henry Guion's employ.

Davenant listened in silence. "So the thing is out?" was his only
comment.

"It's out--and all over the place," Drusilla answered, tearfully. "We're
th