miss was up to some sort of mischief.  But what mischief?  Watching and waiting, but no longer confining my attention to the parlour, I presently espied her stealing along the passageway I have mentioned, carrying a long cloak which she rolled up and hid behind the open door.  Then she came back humming a gay little song which didn’t deceive me for a moment.  ‘Good!’ thought I, ‘she and that cloak will soon join company.’  And they did.  As we were playing the Harebell mazurka I again caught sight of her stealthy white figure in that distant doorway.  Seizing the cloak, she wrapped it round her, and with just one furtive look backwards, seen, I warrant, by no one but myself, she vanished in the outside dark.  ‘Now to note who follows her!’ But nobody followed her.  This struck me as strange, and having a natural love for detective work, in spite of my devotion to the arts, I consulted the clock at the foot of the stairs, and noting that it was half-past eleven, scribbled the hour on the margin of my music, with the intention of seeing how long my lady would linger outside alone.  Gentlemen, it was two hours before I saw her face again.  How she got back into the house I do not know.  It was not by the garden door, for my eye seldom left it; yet at or near half-past one I heard her voice on the stair above me and saw her descend and melt into the crowd as if she had not been absent from it for more than five minutes.  A half-hour later I saw her with Frederick again.  They were dancing, but not with the same spirit as before, and even while I watched them they separated.  Now where was Miss Page during those two long hours?  I think I know, and it is time I unburdened myself to the police.

“But first I must inform you of a small discovery I made while the dance was still in progress.  Miss Page had descended the stairs, as I have said, from what I now know to have been her own room.  Her dress was, in all respects, the same as before, with one exception—­her white slippers had been exchanged for blue ones.  This seemed to show that they had been rendered unserviceable, or at least unsightly, by the walk she had taken.  This in itself was not remarkable nor would her peculiar escapade have made more than a temporary impression upon my curiosity if she had not afterward shown in my presence such an unaccountable and extraordinary interest in the murder which had taken place in the town below during the very hours of her absence from Mr. Sutherland’s ball.  This, in consideration of her sex, and her being a stranger to the person attacked, was remarkable, and, though perhaps I had no business to do what I did, I no sooner saw the house emptied of master and servants than I stole softly back, and climbed the stairs to her room.  Had no good followed this intrusion, which, I am quite ready to acknowledge, was a trifle presumptuous, I would have held my peace in regard to it; but as I did make a discovery there, which has, as I believe, an important bearing on this affair, I have forced