"_Mais, oui_," she exclaimed. "We were together in Mentone, when I read in a newspaper about this dreadful affair. I had just heard from a friend here that Mademoiselle Vera was staying at the _Grand Hotel_, so I told Lady Thorold. She was _desolee_ at the news about Sir Charles--_pauvre homme_--and said she must return at once to see him, and asked me if I would come with her. So I said, `Oh, yes.' And here I am. Do you remember our evening together at the ball in Monte Carlo?" she ended, with a rippling, silvery laugh. "Where are you staying?" Faulkner asked. "I? At the _Piccadilly Hotel_. You must come to supper with me there. What night will you come?" We made some excuse for not arranging definitely what night we would have supper with her, and I laughed as I thought of the two louis I had given the girl as a bribe to remove her mask, and of the sum I had afterwards paid her to take me to Vera. And now she was staying at the _Piccadilly Hotel_, and giving supper parties--the girl whom I had once believed to be Lady Thorold's maid! How strangely wags the world to-day! As we all three emerged into Burlington Gardens, boys came rushing past with the latest edition of an evening paper. "_Ah, gran' Dieu_!" she cried, as she caught sight of the contents bills. For this was what we read on them-- HOUGHTON PARK. SACKS OF GOLD DISCOVERED. AMAZING STORY. She snatched a paper from the nearest boy, but it contained only the news we had just read on the club tape. Judith seemed more upset at the news of Sir Charles' condition, I thought, than about the "Houghton Siege," as the papers called it. She said she must go at once to Lady Thorold, and, hailing a passing taxi, left us. As I looked at the pictures of Houghton Park, in that paper we had bought, I could not help wondering what the Rutland people must be saying. Only a month or two ago, the sudden flight of the Thorolds from Houghton, and the events that had followed, had brought that exclusive county notoriety, which I knew it hated. Then there had been the mystery of old Taylor's death in the house in Belgrave Street, and quite recently the mystery of the mummified remains, both of which events had again brought Rutland indirectly into the limelight of publicity, the Thorolds and myself being Rutland people.