idity. She also was inclined to like
Lucian more than was reasonable for the peace of her heart; so these two
people, each drawn to the other, should have come together as lovers
even at this second meeting.

But, alas! for the prosaicness of this workaday world, they had to
assume the attitudes of lawyer and client; and discourse of crime
instead of love. The situation was a trifle ironical, and must have
provoked the laughter of the gods.

"Well?" asked Miss Vrain, getting to business as soon as Lucian was
seated, "and what have you found out?"

"A great deal likely to be of service to us. And you?"

"I!" replied Miss Vrain in a satisfied tone. "I have discovered that the
stiletto with the ribbon is gone from the library."

"Who took it away?"

"No one knows. I can't find out, although I asked all the servants; but
it has been missing from its place for some months."

"Do you think Mrs. Vrain took it?"

"I can't say," replied Diana, "but I have made one discovery about Mrs.
Vrain which implicates her still more in the crime. She was not in
Berwin Manor on Christmas Eve, but in town."

"Really!" said Lucian much amazed. "But Link was told that she spent
Christmas in the Manor at Bath."

"So she did. Link asked generally, and was answered generally. Mrs.
Vrain went up to town on Christmas Eve and returned on Christmas Day;
but," said Diana, with emphasis, "she spent the night in town, and on
that night the murder was committed."

Lucian produced his pocketbook and took therefrom the fragment of gauze,
which he handed to Diana.

"I found this on the fence at the back of No. 13," he said. "It is a
veil--a portion of a velvet-spotted veil."

"A velvet-spotted veil!" cried Diana, looking at it. "Then it belongs to
Lydia Vrain. She usually wears velvet-spotted veils. Mr. Denzil, the
evidence is complete--that woman is guilty!"

CHAPTER XIII

GOSSIP

Going by circumstantial evidence, Diana certainly had good grounds to
accuse Mrs. Vrain of committing the crime, for there were four points at
least which could be proved past all doubt as incriminating her strongly
in the matter.

In the first place, the female shadow on the blind seen by Lucian,
showed that a woman had been in the habit of entering the house by the
secret way of the cellar, and during the absence of Vrain.

Secondly, the finding of the parti-coloured ribbon in the Silent House,
which had been knotted round the handle of the stile