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his hotel, had never witnessed such a scene before. They were all as excited as could be, and they were all talking at once, and every second or two someone else kept coming in with some fresh tale of a dreadful loss. How that man kept his head at all was, and is, a mystery to me. At last he reduced them to something like silence, and in the presence of them all he said to me—pointing at me with his finger, as if I were a thing to be pointed at:—

"It is you who have done this! You!"

Someone exclaimed in the crowd: "I saw her coming out of Mrs. Anstruther's room."

The manager demanded: "Who spoke? Who was it said that?"

A slight, faded, fair-haired woman came out into the public gaze.

"I am Mrs. Anstruther's maid. I was going along to her room when I saw this young lady come out of the door. Whether she saw me or not I can't say; she might have done, because she ran off as fast as ever she could. I wondered what she was doing there, and when my mistress came I told her what I had seen, and that's what made her open her trunk."

"What Perkins says is quite true," corroborated Mrs. Anstruther. "She did tell me, and that made me uneasy; I had heard something about a diamond pendant having been stolen last night, so I opened my jewel-case, and my diamonds were gone."

"Mine was the diamond pendant which was stolen by this creature last night," interposed Miss Goodridge. "She came to my room and took it out of my trunk. Since she did that it seems not impossible that she has played the same trick on other people to-day. If she has, she must have had a pretty good haul, because I don't believe there is a person in the hotel who hasn't lost something."

The manager spoke to an under-strapper.

"Have this young woman's luggage searched at once, in the presence of witnesses, and let me know the result as soon as you possibly can."

As the under-strapper went out I noticed for the first time that Mr. Sterndale was present with the rest, and almost at the same instant his sister came in. She looked about her as if wondering what was the cause of all the fuss. Then she went up to her brother, and he whispered something to her, and she whispered something to him. Only three or four words in each case, but my heart gave a leap in my bosom—I mean that, really, because it did feel as if it actually had jumped—courage came into me, and strength, and something better than hope: certainty; because they had delivered themselves into my hands. I was never more thankful that I had the power of eavesdropping—you can call it eavesdropping, if you like!—than I was at that moment. Only a second before I had been fearing that I was in a tight place, from which there was no way out; which would mean something for me from which my very soul seemed to shrink. But God had given me a gift, a talent, which I had striven with all my might to improve ten, twenty fold, and that would deliver me from the wiles of those two people, even when hope of deliverance there seemed none. I feel confident that I held myself straighter, that trouble went from my face as it had done from my heart, and that, though each moment the case against me seemed to be growing blacker and blacker, I grew calmer and more self-possessed. I knew I had only to wait till the proper moment came, and the toils in which they thought they had caught me would prove to be mere nothings; they would be caught, and I should be free.

All the same, until that moment for which I was waiting came, it was not nice for me—standing there amidst all those excited people, between two porters, who kept close to either side of me, as if I were a prisoner and they had me in charge; though I dare say it was as well that they did keep as close to me as they did, because I fancy that some of the injured guests at that hotel would have liked to give me a practical demonstration of what their feelings towards me were.

That under-strapper came back in a surprisingly short space of time with a hand-bag—a brown bag, which I recognized to be my own.

The agitated guests crowded round him like a swarm of bees. He had difficulty in forcing his way through them. The manager did his best to keep them in something like order—first with a show of mildness.

"Ladies, gentlemen—gently, gently, if you please." Then, with sudden ferocity: "Stand back, there! If you will not stand back, if you will not make room, how can anything be done? Keep these people back!"

To whom this order was addressed was not quite clear. Thus admonished, the people kept themselves back—at least, sufficiently to enable that under-strapper to pass with my bag to the table. The manager said to him:—

"Go to the other side; what have you in that bag?" When, as he said this, his guests evinced an inclination to press forward,