handed it to her. "You dropped this in Cumnor Street this
afternoon, Lady Alroy," I said very calmly. She looked at me in
terror but made no attempt to take the handkerchief. "What were you
doing there?" I asked. "What right have you to question me?" she
answered. "The right of a man who loves you," I replied; "I came
here to ask you to be my wife." She hid her face in her hands, and
burst into floods of tears. "You must tell me," I continued. She
stood up, and, looking me straight in the face, said, "Lord
Murchison, there is nothing to tell you."--"You went to meet some
one," I cried; "this is your mystery." She grew dreadfully white,
and said, "I went to meet no one."--"Can't you tell the truth?" I
exclaimed. "I have told it," she replied. I was mad, frantic; I
don't know what I said, but I said terrible things to her. Finally
I rushed out of the house. She wrote me a letter the next day; I
sent it back unopened, and started for Norway with Alan Colville.
After a month I came back, and the first thing I saw in the Morning
Post was the death of Lady Alroy. She had caught a chill at the
Opera, and had died in five days of congestion of the lungs. I shut
myself up and saw no one. I had loved her so much, I had loved her
so madly. Good God! how I had loved that woman!'

'You went to the street, to the house in it?' I said.

'Yes,' he answered.

'One day I went to Cumnor Street. I could not help it; I was
tortured with doubt. I knocked at the door, and a respectable-
looking woman opened it to me. I asked her if she had any rooms to
let. "Well, sir," she replied, "the drawing-rooms are supposed to
be let; but I have not seen the lady for three months, and as rent