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here?” went on the prying sweet voice. “Of course I saw them at the funeral. But were they here in the house? Are they staying here?”
    Young as she was, Christobel could not help seeing what the woman was trying to find out, and she shut her lips, determined not to give out any more information. But suddenly, before she could think how to give an answer that told nothing, she heard stealthy sounds overhead, or thought she did, and her father’s suggestion that she keep her eyes and ears open came to her. It certainly sounded as if someone, or perhaps more than one, were walking about overhead. And this room was directly under Charmian’s apartment.
    She started and sprang to her feet.
    â€œOh,” she said, “I’ve just remembered something Father told me to do—about the servants—I’d forgotten! And it must be attended to at once. Will you excuse me a moment?” She hurried from the room.
    She went cautiously, with swift step, her senses alert. Yes, there certainly were footsteps coming along the upper hall, coming from the direction of Charmian’s room she was sure, as she paused an instant to listen, with one foot on the lower step of the stairs. There seemed to be more than one person!
    There was a swift shadow crossing the head of the stairs above the second landing, and then another, making a wide grotesque shadow on the wall at the side of the first landing, as if a woman with her arms full of something were passing. And then came a second, and a third, each hurrying faster than the last, almost pushing one another along.
    Christobel, with swift, catlike tread, sprang up the stairs, reaching the top just in time to see the last of the three shadows vanish through the doorway that led into the back hall. She had distinctly seen the last figure and was sure it was Marie. Her arms had been full of garments of all kinds lying across a big cardboard box. Then the leather swing door that arranged for silence swung back, caught in something bright and scarlet like a flame, and stayed open until a hand snatched at and pushed back the hindrance, and the bright thing fell back and lay on the floor while the door swung shut.
    Christobel stood still, her hand instinctively going to her heart as if to hush the noise of its beating. She waited a full minute it seemed to her, then she tiptoed softly to the door and picked up the bright flame, hurrying forward to her father’s room with it, trembling so that she scarcely dared to look at what she held.
    She went into her father’s room and flashed on the light, holding out the garment. Yes, it was as she had thought, a scarlet dress of exquisite velvet, transparent and supple as a serpent’s empty skin, and bearing on one shoulder a gorgeous jeweled pin. It was light as a feather and slippery like a living thing. When she held it out, Christobel could see her stepmother in it, as she had seen her at Christmastime when an unexpected indulgence had allowed her to come home for part of the holidays. Not that there had been much Christmas about it, or home either, for her father had been busy at the office most of the time, and her stepmother had been going out to parties till all hours. But she had seen her in this red velvet sheath ready for the Christmas party, her white shoulders gleaming with dazzling, almost unearthly beauty against the quivering ripples of the velvet, her great eyes flashing like two dark jewels in the startling penciled and shadowed whiteness of her makeup. And quickly there came a vision of that same proud woman lying dead, the scornful jewels of her eyes closed forever, the long curled lashes lying on a still, white cheek.
    Christobel shivered and dropped the velvet thing as if it had been a snake. Dropped it into a chair at the back of the room, out of sight, and went out of the room, shutting the door behind her. It would be safe there until her father came. Oh, if he would come soon!