O most lame and impotent conclusion! But Lucy carried it farther than her words; for when Mr. Stopper entered the next morning, with a face scared into the ludicrous, she, without even waiting to hear what he had to say, though she foreboded evil, rose at once and left the room. Mr. Stopper stood and looked after her in dismayed admiration; for Lucy was one of those few whose anger even is of such an unselfish and unspiteful nature, that it gives a sort of piquancy to their beauty. "I hope I haven't offended the young lady," said Mr. Stopper, with some concern. "Never you mind, Mr. Stopper. I've been giving her a hint about Thomas, and she's not got over it yet. Never you mind her. It's me you've got to do with, and I ain't got no fancies." "It's just as well, perhaps, that she did walk herself away," said Mr. Stopper. "You've got some news, Mr. Stopper. Sit ye down. Will you have a cup o' tea?" "No, thank you. Where's the keys, Mrs. Boxall?" The old lady looked up at the wall, then back at Mr. Stopper. "Why, go along! There they are in your own hand." "Yes; but where do you think I found them?--Hanging in the door of the safe, and all the money gone from the cash-box. I haven't got over the shock of it yet." "Why, good heavens! Mr. Stopper," said the old lady, who was rather out of temper with both herself and Lucy, "you don't think _I've_ been a-robbing of your cash-box, do you?" Mr. Stopper laughed aloud. "Well, ma'am, that would be a roundabout way of coming by your own. I don't think we could make out a case against you if you had. Not quite. But, seriously, who came into the house after I left? I hung the keys on that wall with my own hands." "And I saw them there when I went to bed," said Mrs. Boxall, making a general impression ground for an individual assertion. "Then somebody must have come in after you had gone to bed--some one that knew the place. Did you find the street door had been tampered with?" "Lucy opened it this morning." Mrs. Boxall went to the door and called her grand-daughter. Lucy came, thinking Mr. Stopper must be gone. When she saw him there, she would have left the room again, but her grandmother interfered. "Come here, child," she said, peremptorily. "Was the house-door open when you went down this morning?" Lucy felt her face grow pale with the vaguest foreboding--associated with the figure which had run through the archway and her finding the door open. But she kept her self-command. "No, grannie. The door was shut as usual." "Did nobody call last night?" asked Mr. Stopper, who had his suspicions, and longed to have them confirmed in order to pay off old scores at once. "Nobody; that I'll give my word for," answered Mrs. Boxall. "A most unaccountable thing, ladies," said Stopper, rubbing his forehead as if he would fain rouse an idea in his baffled brain. "Have you lost much money?" asked the old lady.