"Don't you think," I suggested, "that when you thought you had lost it, you had perhaps really only slipped it into your writing-case, or into some book or papers which you haven't happened to open since then until now? Then it fell out without your noticing it, and either you were at that time at the place where I picked it up, or else some one's dress may have swept it there from your room. It was very near to the door." "That is _possible_, no doubt," she returned, thoughtfully. "Yet still, I can hardly believe it to have happened so. I felt as positive as one can be about anything, that it was not in an envelope at all, and that I had put it"--she hesitated a moment, and then finished, "somewhere else." As she did not seem inclined to mention where she really had put it, I thought I had better pretend to suppose that its destination had been a photograph-album. "It would be very easy to be mistaken about what you had done with it, though," said I. "Probably when it was given you it was in an envelope, and then you were interrupted just as you were going to stick it into your book, and after that you forgot all about it, and it got mislaid." "Well, you may be right," she replied. "Indeed I don't see any other way of accounting for the matter. But it is odd how I can have been so completely wrong in the impression I had as to what I had done with it." The theory I had propounded seemed sufficiently plausible to content her, and she did not again allude to the affair. But I had little doubt that she thought about it a good deal for all that, because of a new look which I noticed in her face occasionally during the next day or two, and which was different from any other that I had seen there hitherto. A gleam of soft light would flash out from her eyes, accompanied by an expression of countenance which was curious, half-ashamed, tender, and wistful, and gave the impression rather of unhappiness than of the joy a girl would be likely to feel when thinking of her lover. This look of sadness would last perhaps for a minute, and then invariably be succeeded by one that was scornful, hard, and impenetrable. It was beyond me to interpret these signs satisfactorily. That Captain Norroy had power to excite emotions of _some_ kind in her breast I felt sure; but whether these emotions were pleasurable or the reverse, I was unable to make out. CHAPTER XIII. LORD CLEMENT. Lady Mervyn's prediction regarding Lord Clement's movements proved to be correct. His yacht, _La Catalina_, arrived at Cannes two or three days after we did, and that event was speedily followed by the appearance of her noble owner at the hotel where we were staying.