“To both, perhaps, certainly to you. She was disappointed once when she lost us both by wavering between your title and my supposed fortune. She is miserable with the old man, and her only hope is in his death, for he is very feeble. You are free, and doubly attractive now, so beware, or she will entangle you before you know it.” “Thanks, Mentor. I've no fear, and shall merely amuse myself for a week--they stay no longer.” And with a careless laugh, Sir Jasper strolled away. “Much mischief may be done in a week, and this is the beginning of it,” muttered Treherne, as he raised himself to look under the bronze vase for the note. It was gone! Chapter III WHO WAS IT? Who had taken it? This question tormented Treherne all that sleepless night. He suspected three persons, for only these had approached the fire after the note was hidden. He had kept his eye on it, he thought, till the stir of breaking up. In that moment it must have been removed by the major, Frank Annon, or my lady; Sir Jasper was out of the question, for he never touched an ornament in the drawing room since he had awkwardly demolished a whole _étagère_ of costly trifles, to his mother's and sister's great grief. The major evidently suspected something, Annon was jealous, and my lady would be glad of a pretext to remove her daughter from his reach. Trusting to his skill in reading faces, he waited impatiently for morning, resolving to say nothing to anyone but Mrs. Snowdon, and from her merely to inquire what the note contained. Treherne usually was invisible till lunch, often till dinner; therefore, fearing to excite suspicion by unwonted activity, he did not appear till noon. The mailbag had just been opened, and everyone was busy over their letters, but all looked up to exchange a word with the newcomer, and Octavia impulsively turned to meet him, then checked herself and hid her suddenly crimsoned face behind a newspaper. Treherne's eye took in everything, and saw at once in the unusually late arrival of the mail a pretext for discovering the pilferer of the note. “All have letters but me, yet I expected one last night. Major, have you got it among yours?” And as he spoke, Treherne fixed his penetrating eyes full on the person he addressed. With no sign of consciousness, no trace of confusion, the major carefully turned over his pile, and replied in the most natural manner, “Not a trace of it; I wish there was, for nothing annoys me more than any delay or mistake about my letters.” He knows nothing of it, thought Treherne, and turned to Annon, who was deep in a long epistle from some intimate friend, with a talent for imparting news, to judge from the reader's interest. “Annon, I appeal to you, for I _must_ discover who has robbed me of my letter.” “I have but one, read it, if you will, and satisfy yourself” was the brief reply.