I did not see him again till occasion took me below, when I beheld him
softly issue from Mr. Blake's private apartment. Meeting me, he
smiled, and I saw that whether he was conscious of betraying it or
not, he had come upon some clue or at the least fashioned for himself
some theory with which he was more or less satisfied.

"An elegant apartment, that," whispered he, nodding sideways toward
the room he had just left, "pity you haven't time to examine it."

"Are you sure that I haven't?" returned I, drawing a step nearer to
escape the eyes of Mrs. Daniels who had descended after me.

"Quite sure;" and we hastened down together into the yard.

But my curiosity once aroused in this way would not let me rest.
Taking an opportunity when Mr. Gryce was engaged in banter with the
girls below, and in this way learning more in a minute of what he
wanted to know than some men would gather in an hour by that or any
other method, I stole lightly back and entered this room.

I almost started in my surprise. Instead of the luxurious apartment I
had prepared myself to behold, a plain, scantily-furnished room
opened before me, of a nature between a library and a studio. There
was not even a carpet on the polished floor, only a rug, which strange
to say was not placed in the centre of the room or even before the
fireplace, but on one side, and directly in front of a picture that
almost at first blush had attracted my attention as being the only
article in the room worth looking at. It was the portrait of a
woman, handsome, haughty and alluring; a modern beauty, with eyes of
fire burning beneath high piled locks of jetty blackness, that were