It worked smoothly,--she had a week previous taken a successful impression,--then, unable to withstand the temptation of casting one glance in the sliding receptacle open at last before her, she delicately insinuated her fingers among its miscellaneous articles, in search of some object of enlightenment. The velvet shoe first caught her attention. "Little Jane's shoe,--carried over half the world by her unworthy Louis." Jane was her aunt. Louis, Louis,--who was he? Ah, her scapegrace uncle, dead long since. He had run away from the parental roof, and had subsequently been much of a traveller. Here was a letter, a half-open letter, the paper yellow, the ink pale, in which the closing words related to this same uncle. "If Louis should come home." She wondered how long Louis had lived after leaving home. He had apparently survived his father's death, and she carefully restored the letter to the exact spot from which she had taken it. "Gentleman George and His Gigantic Games,"--this was a newspaper extract. Her aunt knew, then, that Derrice's father was a criminal. How had she found out? Did Justin Mercer know? Surely not; he would never have married the daughter of a man who had violated the law of his country. Her surprised mind ran off in this new field of conjecture, until, suddenly remembering the necessity for haste, she laid the extract back beside the shoe, and was about closing the drawer when one of the flippant head-lines arrested her hand. "The Bank Burglar a Fetich Worshipper. Undertakes No Job without His Charm of the Velvet Shoe." She caught the paper up again, and breathlessly read through the article, in which was jauntily outlined the phenomenal career of a man who had successfully carried through some of the greatest bank robberies the world had ever known. The reading finished, she sank back on the floor and stared in blank horror before her. Gentleman George was Louis Gastonguay. The errant son had never died. Derrice Mercer was her cousin. Fool! Fool that she had been! and she clasped wildly her beating breast. A hundred confirmatory occurrences flashed into her mind. A long chain of evidence linked itself before her eyes. She had thought herself so clever,--how unutterably stupid had been her proceedings! She had set a ball rolling that would crash in pieces this ancient house. She saw herself discovered and dishonoured, her aunt's gray hairs brought down in sorrow to the grave. She herself had pointed out the game to the hunter below. Nothing would stop him. Nothing could restore her to her lost estate of guiltlessness.