public. Is there anything I can do before I leave you again? May I send
you some more champagne? Please say yes!"

"A thousand thanks, Major. No more champagne for the present."

He turned at the door to kiss his hand to me at parting. At the same
moment I saw his eyes wander slyly toward the book-case. It was only for
an instant. I had barely detected him before he was out of the room.

Left by myself again, I looked at the book-case--looked at it
attentively for the first time.

It was a handsome piece of furniture in ancient carved oak, and it
stood against the wall which ran parallel with the hall of the house.
Excepting the space occupied in the upper corner of the room by the
second door, which opened into the hall, the book-case filled the whole
length of the wall down to the window. The top was ornamented by vases,
candelabra, and statuettes, in pairs, placed in a row. Looking along
the row, I noticed a vacant space on the top of the bookcase at the
extremity of it which was nearest to the window. The opposite extremity,
nearest to the door, was occupied by a handsome painted vase of a very
peculiar pattern. Where was the corresponding vase, which ought to have
been placed at the corresponding extremity of the book-case? I returned
to the open sixth drawer of the cabinet, and looked in again. There was
no mistaking the pattern on the fragments when I examined them now. The
vase which had been broken was the vase which had stood in the place now
vacant on the top of the book-case at the end nearest to the window.

Making this discovery, I took out the fragments, down to the smallest
morsel of the shattered china, and examined them carefully one after
another.

I was too ignorant of the subject to be able to estimate the value of
the vase or the antiquity of the vase, or even to know whether it were
of British or of foreign manufacture. The ground was of a delicate
cream-color. The ornaments traced on this were wreaths of flowers and
Cupids surrounding a medallion on either side of the vase. Upon the
space within one of the medallions was painted with exquisite delicacy
a woman's head, representing a nymph or a goddess, or perhaps a portrait
of some celebrated person--I was not learned enough to say which.
The other medallion inclosed the head of a man, also treated in the
classical style. Reclining shepherds and shepherdesses in Watteau
costume, with their dogs and their sheep, formed the adornments of the