amount of strength. Climbing up, step after
step, Lucian arose through the aperture like a genie out of the earth,
and soon found that he could jump easily out of the cellar into the
yard.

"Good!" he exclaimed, much gratified by this discovery. "I now see how
the assassin entered. No wonder the kitchen door was bolted and barred,
and that no one was seen to visit Vrain by the front door. Any one who
knew the position of that skylight could obtain admission easily, at any
hour, by descending the ladder and passing through cellar and kitchen to
the upper part of the house. So much is clear, but I must next discover
how those who entered got into this yard."

And, indeed, there seemed no outlet, for the yard was enclosed on three
sides by a fence of palings the height of a man, and rendered impervious
to damp by a coating of tar; on the fourth side by the house itself.
Only over the fence--which was no insuperable obstacle--could a stranger
have gained access to the yard; and towards the fence opposite to the
house Lucian walked. In it there was no gate, or opening of any kind, so
it would appear that to come into the yard a stranger would need to
climb over, a feat easily achieved by a moderately active man.

As Denzil examined this frail barrier his eye was caught by a fluttering
object on the left--that is, the side in a line with the skylight. This
he found was the scrap of a woman's veil of thin black gauze spotted
with velvet. At once his thoughts reverted to the shadow of the woman on
the blind, and the suspicions of Diana Vrain.

"Great heavens!" he thought, "can that doll of a Lydia be guilty, after
all?"

CHAPTER XII

THE VEIL AND ITS OWNER

As may be surmised, Lucian was considerably startled by the discovery of
this important evidence so confirmative of Diana's suspicions. Yet the
knowledge which Link had gained relative to Mrs. Vrain's remaining at
Berwin Manor to keep Christmas seemed to contradict the fact; and he
could by no means reconcile her absence with the presence on the fence
of the fragment of gauze; still less with the supposition that she must
have climbed over a tolerably difficult obstacle to enter the yard, let
alone the necessity--by no means easy to a woman--of descending into the
disused cellar by means of a shaky and fragile ladder.

"After all," thought Lucian, when he was seated that same evening at his
dinner, "I am no more certain that the veil is the property of Mrs.