the world, in my small way, and I know where things lead to. How-
ever, Mr. Beebe is a guarantee of a sort that they will not
presume on this."

"Mother wouldn't mind I'm sure," said Lucy, but again had the
sense of larger and unsuspected issues.

Miss Bartlett only sighed, and enveloped her in a protecting
embrace as she wished her good-night. It gave Lucy the sensation
of a fog, and when she reached her own room she opened the window
and breathed the clean night air, thinking of the kind old man
who had enabled her to see the lights dancing in the Arno and the
cypresses of San Miniato, and the foot-hills of the Apennines,
black against the rising moon.

Miss Bartlett, in her room, fastened the window-shutters and
locked the door, and then made a tour of the apartment to see
where the cupboards led, and whether there were any oubliettes or
secret entrances. It was then that she saw, pinned up over the
washstand, a sheet of paper on which was scrawled an enormous
note of interrogation. Nothing more.

"What does it mean?" she thought, and she examined it carefully
by the light of a candle. Meaningless at first, it gradually
became menacing, obnoxious, portentous with evil. She was seized
with an impulse to destroy it, but fortunately remembered that
she had no right to do so, since it must be the property of young
Mr. Emerson. So she unpinned it carefully, and put it between two
pieces of blotting-paper to keep it clean for him. Then she
completed her inspection of the room, sighed heavily according to