"Have you seen my blue note paper, Page?" she asked. "I want to drop a note to Mrs. Cressler, right away." "No," said Page, as she rose from the couch. "No, I haven't seen it." She came towards her sister across the room. "I thought, maybe," she added, gravely, as she drew the heart-shaped match box from her pocket, "that you might be looking for this. I took it. I knew you wouldn't care to have Mr. Jadwin find it here." Laura struck the little silver heart from Page's hand, with a violence that sent it spinning across the room, and sprang to her feet. "You took it!" she cried. "You took it! How dare you! What do you mean? What do I care if Curtis should find it here? What's it to me that he should know that Mr. Corthell came up here? Of course he was here." But Page, though very pale, was perfectly calm under her sister's outburst. "If you didn't care whether any one knew that Mr. Corthell came up here," she said, quietly, "why did you tell us this morning at breakfast that you and he were in the art gallery the whole evening? I thought," she added, with elaborate blandness, "I thought I would be doing you a service in hiding the match box." "A service! You! What have I to hide?" cried Laura, almost inarticulate. "Of course I said we were in the art gallery the whole evening. So we were. We did--I do remember now--we did come up here for an instant, to see how my picture hung. We went downstairs again at once. We did not so much as sit down. He was not in the room two minutes." "He was here," returned Page, "long enough to smoke half a dozen times." She pointed to a silver pen tray on the mahogany table, hidden behind a book rack and littered with the ashes and charred stumps of some five or six cigarettes. "Really, Laura," Page remarked. "Really, you manage very awkwardly, it seems to me." Laura caught her riding-crop in her right hand "Don't you--don't you make me forget myself;" she cried, breathlessly. "It seems to me," observed Page, quietly, "that you've done that long since, yourself." Laura flung the crop down and folded her arms. "Now," she cried, her eyes blazing and rivetted upon Page's. "Now, just what do you mean? Sit down," she commanded, flinging a hand towards a chair, "sit down, and tell me just what you mean by all this." But Page remained standing. She met her sister's gaze without wavering. "Do you want me to believe," she answered, "that it made no difference to you that Mr. Corthell's match safe was here?" "Not the least," exclaimed Laura. "Not the least." "Then why did you search for it so when you came in? I was not asleep all of the time. I saw you."