n Beulah, my cat, a
most intelligent animal, found some early catnip on a bank near the
house and rolled in it in a feline ecstasy, I decided that getting back
to nature was the thing to do.

While I was dressing for dinner, Liddy rapped at the door. She was
hardly herself yet, but privately I think she was worrying about the
broken mirror and its augury, more than anything else. When she came in
she was holding something in her hand, and she laid it on the
dressing-table carefully.

"I found it in the linen hamper," she said. "It must be Mr. Halsey's,
but it seems queer how it got there."

It was the half of a link cuff-button of unique design, and I looked at
it carefully.

"Where was it? In the bottom of the hamper?" I asked.

"On the very top," she replied. "It's a mercy it didn't fall out on
the way."

When Liddy had gone I examined the fragment attentively. I had never
seen it before, and I was certain it was not Halsey's. It was of
Italian workmanship, and consisted of a mother-of-pearl foundation,
encrusted with tiny seed-pearls, strung on horsehair to hold them. In
the center was a small ruby. The trinket was odd enough, but not
intrinsically of great value. Its interest for me lay in this: Liddy
had found it lying in the top of the hamper which had blocked the
east-wing stairs.

That afternoon the Armstrongs' housekeeper, a youngish good-looking
woman, applied for Mrs. Ralston's place, and I was glad enough to take
her. She looked as though she might be equal to a dozen of Liddy, with
her snapping black eyes and heavy jaw. Her name was Anne Watson, and I
dined that evening for the first time in three days.

CHAPTER III

MR. JOHN BAILEY APPEARS

I had dinner served in the breakfast-room. Somehow the huge
dining-room depressed me, and Thomas, cheerful enough all day, allowed
his spirits to go down with the sun. He had a habit of watching the
corners of the room, left shadowy by the candles on the table, and
altogether it was not a festive meal.

Dinner over I went into the living-room. I had three hours before the
children could possibly arrive, and I got out my knitting. I had
brought along two dozen pairs of slipper soles in assorted sizes--I
always send knitted slippers to the Old Ladies' Home at Christmas--and
now I sorted over the wools with a grim determination not to think
about the night before. But my mind was not on my work: at the end of
a half-hour I found I had p