When I came to the servants I couldn’t see but what every one of them registered honesty. If it had been printed on their foreheads with a rubber stamp it couldn’t have been plainer. There were only two new ones in the outfit—girls, one of them my chambermaid—and no one, not even a sleuth desperate for glory, could have considered them. Outside there were gardeners and chauffeurs—in all there were twenty-one people employed—but it was the same with them. They were a decent, well-paid lot, the garage men and head gardener living on the place, the laborers lodged in the village. The one person my eye lingered on was Miss Maitland the Secretary. Not that there was anything suspicious about her, but that she wasn’t as simple and easy to see into as the others. She was a handsome girl, tall and well made, sticking close to her job and not having much to do with any one. Her study was just under the day nursery where we had lessons and had its own door on to the piazza. When she wasn’t at work, she’d either sit there reading or go off walking by herself and there was something solitary and serious about her that interested me. The nursery window was a good look-out, commanding the lawns and garden and with the tennis court to one side. After lessons I’d let the blinds down and coil up there on a cushion, and I saw her several times coming in and going out, always alone, and always looking thoughtful and depressed. To get any information about her I had to be very careful for Mrs. Janney thought the world of her, but I managed to worm out some facts, though nothing of any importance. She had come to Mrs. Janney from a friend who had had her as secretary for two years. She was entirely dependent on her work for her living, was an orphan, and had no followers. The only thing the least degree out of line was that several times during the spring and the early summer she had asked for more days and afternoons off than formerly. Mrs. Janney didn’t seem to think anything of this and I didn’t either. The girl—settled down in her place and knowing it secure—was slackening up on her first speed. There were a lot of people coming and going in the house—oftenest, Mr. Richard Ferguson. I’d heard of him—everybody has—millions, unmarried, and so forth and so on. I hadn’t been there thirty-six hours before I saw that Mrs. Price had an eye for him. That’s putting it in a considerate, refined way. If I was the cat some women are, I’d say she was camped on his trail, with her lassoo ready in her hand. Of course she’d work it the way ladies do, very genteel, pretend to be lazy if he wanted to play tennis and when he was off for a swim wonder if she had the energy to walk to the beach. But she always got there; every time, rain or shine, she’d be awake at the switch. I didn’t know whether he responded—you couldn’t tell. He was the kind who was jolly and affable to everybody; even if he was a plutocrat you had to like him.