Pape sprang to his feet and back, as much amazed over his feat as the dazed-looking Miss Lauderdale. Then, at once, he got control of himself; straightened his cuffs, as his teacher always had done after turning the trick; remarked most calmly: “The thief must have been changing the combination in the hope of delaying the discovery of his crime and been frightened into such a panic that he didn’t take time to close the door.” Mrs. Sturgis again bent to the safe. She had reached well into it when, with a poignant cry, she put both hands to her eyes and started back. “It’s there again! This is getting too much for my nerves. Was I mad before or am I going mad now? Jane—Mr. Pape—_it isn’t gone_—_at all_!” The girl next applied to the cavity in the wall. Her face set in an apparent effort to “mind” her nerves. She reached in and drew out an oblong box of gold beautifully carved and set with small rubies in a design of peacocks. From her expression—no longer disagreeable, but beautiful from an ecstasy of relief—Pape judged this to be the “stolen” heirloom upon which she was said to set such store. That her aunt might be absolutely reassured, Jane Lauderdale handed her the _tabatière_ so recently accounted missing. That good lady, however, looked weak, as if about to drop the jeweled box. Pape relieved her of it; led her to a chair. “I—I don’t understand.” Like a child utterly dependent on grown-ups for explanation, she glanced from one to the other of the younger pair. “Except for that famous precision of yours, it would seem easy enough,” Jane offered with more clarity than respect. “You must have pushed the box aside when you took out the pieces Irene wanted to wear. Your hands were full and you neglected to close the safe. When you came down again for your black pearl set and found the door open you thought at once of my snuffbox and jumped at the conclusion, since it wasn’t in the place you remembered putting it, that it wasn’t there at all. Cheer up. You wouldn’t be the dearest auntie in the world if you weren’t human.” Pape seconded her. “The most precise of us are liable to figments of the imagination, madam. All’s well that ends that way. A snuffbox in hand is worth two in the ——” But Aunt Helene wasn’t so sure. She interrupted in a complaining voice, as if offended at their effort to cheer her. “I never jump at conclusions—_never_. If I was startled into jumping at the one you mention, Jane, it seems strange that I selected these black pearls so accurately. _Doesn’t_ it? And I’d almost take oath that the box wasn’t pushed to one side—that it stood, when I found it just now, exactly on the spot where I first placed it. And then, Mr. Pape, the trouble with the combination——”