"Good enough!" agreed Joyce. "I never thought of it. She probably did. Of course that would break up the party at once. Well when she came to and every one had gone, she was wild, frantic with grief or disappointment or disgust, and decided she just _couldn't_ stay in that house any longer. She must have dismissed her servants right away, though why she didn't make them clear up first, I can't think. Then she began to pack up to go away, and decided she wouldn't bother taking most of her things. And sometime, just about then, she probably turned the picture to the wall and took the other one out of her locket and threw it into the fire. Then she went away, and never, never came back any more." "Yes, but how about the house?" objected Cynthia. "How did that get boarded up?" "I have thought that out," said Joyce. "She may have stayed long enough to see the boarding up done, or she may have ordered some one to do it later. It can be done from the outside." "I think she was foolish to leave all her good clothes," commented Cynthia, "and the locket under the bed, too." "I don't believe she remembered the locket--or cared about it!" mused Joyce. "She was probably too upset and hurried to think of it again. And I'm sure she lay on the bed and cried a good deal. It looks like that. Now what do you think of my theory, Cynthia?" "Why, I think it is all right, fine--as far as it goes. I never could have pieced things together in that way. But you haven't thought about who this mysterious relative was, have you?" "Yes, I have, but, of course, that's much harder to decide because we have so little to go on. I'll tell you one thing I've pretty nearly settled, though. Whatever happened, it wasn't that anybody _died_! When people die, you're terribly grieved and upset, of course, and you _may_ shut up your house and never come near it again. I've heard of such things happening. But you generally put things nicely to rights first, and you don't go away and forget more than half your belongings. If you don't tend to these things yourself, you get some one else to do it for you. And one other thing is certain too. You don't turn the dead relative's picture to the wall or tear it out of your locket and throw it into the fire. You'd be far more likely to keep the picture always near so that you could look at it often. Isn't that so?" "Of course!" assented Cynthia. "Then it _must_ have been the other thing that happened. Somebody did something wrong, or disappointing, or disgraceful. It must have been a dreadful thing, to make the Lovely Lady desert that house forever. I can't imagine what!" "But what about the locked-up room?" interrupted Cynthia. "Have you any theory about that? You haven't mentioned it." "That's something I simply can't puzzle out," confessed Joyce. "The Lovely Lady must have locked it, or the disgraceful relative may have done it, or some one entirely different. I can't make any sense out of it."