Mr. Capt was a very superior servant, but like most servants he was innately curious. The little red morocco box, which he had never seen opened, which had always accompanied his deceased master on his numerous journeys, and which was habitually kept in his master's iron safe, had always puzzled him. It's not very much to be wondered at, then, that when Mr. Capt saw the box upon the table in Mrs. Haggard's boudoir, with its key standing invitingly in the lock, he should seize the opportunity to take a peep at its contents. When Capt saw what those contents were, being an unscrupulous man, he hesitated not an instant in becoming their possessor. With men such as Capt, _chantage_, as the French call it, is a favourite mode of obtaining wealth. We know how Capt had blackmailed Lucy Warrender for years, and how he was a past-master in the art. We know, too, that Capt meditated a still grander _coup_. The secret he possessed had been a little fortune to him during poor Lucy's lifetime, and, like the shares of a successful mine, Mr. Capt's secret had developed in value with astonishing rapidity. But Capt was a timid as well as a cautious man; he had a holy horror of the terrors of the law. The secret he had to sell was a valuable one, it is true, but the chain of proof was incomplete. Capt could show that the ladies had gone to Auray in a mysterious manner. Capt could swear that Miss Warrender, under the threat of exposure, had made no secret to him that she was the mother of the boy Lucius; but who Lucius's father was, had been to Mr. Capt an impenetrable mystery. And as Mr. Capt rubbed his hands at the thought of the disclosures he could make and their great pecuniary value, his smile of delight would fade at the reflection, that though all he swore might be perfectly true, yet, like the inspired Cassandra, he might fail to find anybody to believe him. Great then was Capt's delight at getting possession of the miniature which represented Lucy Warrender in her Watteau costume, for it opened up to him the means of placing his own evidence beyond a doubt, by adding to it the probably unwilling testimony of Lord Spunyarn, a witness who would be above suspicion. His master's monogram upon the portrait case, followed by the single word "Rome" and the date, brought back all the facts distinctly to his mind. He remembered actually looking on with his own eyes, disguised as he was as a Roman warrior, upon the _fracas_ between Haggard and the unfortunate Mons. Barbiche at Papayani's ball; he had seen the blue domino upon Haggard's arm, and he had gazed with curiosity, striving to penetrate the secrecy of the very mask which was now in his possession. Probably, he thought, Lord Spunyarn was Haggard's confidant in the whole matter, but when he read the packet of letters all doubt was set at rest, and Mr. Capt felt that the honour of a noble family was his to traffic with, and that all that remained was to look out for the best bargain. Mr.