"Torn lace?" echoed someone involuntarily aloud. Then there _was_ a woman in it, after all! Mr. Narkom mopped his forehead with a handkerchief and glanced about him. "Yes, torn lace, gold lace," he reiterated. "Can you identify it?" There was a momentary hesitation; meanwhile, Cleek's eyes sought his and Cleek's lips seemed to say: "Be careful. Keep Lady Margaret out of it if you can," and Mr. Narkom responded to that appeal with surprising alacrity. "I can't say that I can," he said with a slight smile and a shake of the head. But the Coroner had not done with the subject yet. He held the little fragment of gold high above his head, and then handed it round the table. "Can any one identify it?" he asked, and all eyes went instantly in its direction. There was no response, only, as Cleek looked, a queer, shocked sort of expression came over Sir Edgar's countenance. Just as Cleek's face dropped into lines of concentrated thought there came the sound of a voice somewhat high-pitched and clear, with the carefully accurate accent of a foreigner. Cleek whipped round to see the slim, turbaned figure of Gunga Dall standing far back in the room. "If I may be so permitted," he said in the bland, smooth fashion of his, as the crowd instinctively parted and made way for him to come to the front, "I should like to identify that scrap of gold lace." _Identify it?_ The hush that came over the room could almost be _felt_, it was so intense, so absolute. "We shall be pleased to receive your evidence," broke in the Coroner, shortly; he, like Sir Edgar, had no partiality for "niggers." There was a sort of polite regret upon Gunga Dall's dark features. He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands, with a little pucker of the lips that bespoke dislike of the task he had in hand. "I am sorry to say that it is the property of Lady Margaret Cheyne," he said, serenely. There was a moment of tense silence. You could have heard a pin drop in the ballroom. Cleek sucked in his breath and stood a moment eyeing the Hindoo. If that were so--but the thought was too utterly horrible to be longer entertained. There followed the sound of a little cry echoing across the crowded room. Cleek's eyes went in the direction of it, and saw that Lady Brenton had gone dead white, and that her lips were pinched and blue. Sir Edgar, in a sort of mad abandonment, was pushing his way up through the audience, his eyes flashing, his fists clenched, the red blood flaring in his face, and all his virile young manhood up in defence of the woman he loved. "Say that again, you damned liar, and I'll thrash you within an inch of your precious life!" he shouted. "You can't prove it--you absolutely _can't_, I say! It isn't her scarf at all----" "And I say it _is_!" responded Gunga Dall with an unpleasant little laugh. "Because I happened to have given it to her myself and----"