"Yes; the one you sent the day you left, Miss Redmond. The hotel clerk said you had suddenly left town on a visit to a sick relative." "Oh, yes." Lizzie's quick scent was already on the trail of a mystery, but Agatha was in no mood just then to give her any version of the events of that Monday afternoon. "Was there any other message, Miss Redmond? Some word for me, which the clerk forgot to deliver?" "No, nothing else." "Mr. Straker came Tuesday morning with some contracts for you to sign. He said that you had an appointment with him, and he was nearly crazy when he found you had gone away without leaving your address." Agatha smiled more and more broadly, to Lizzie's disgust, but she could not help it. "I don't doubt he was disturbed. Did he come again?" "Come again, Miss Redmond!" Lizzie hung a blue silk coat over its hanger, held it carefully up to the light, and turned toward her mistress with the mien of a person who isn't to be bamboozled. "He came twice every day to see if I had any word from you; and when I went to Cousin Hattie's he called me up on the 'phone every morning and evening. Most unreasonable, Mr. Straker was. He said there wasn't a singer in town he could get to fill your engagements, and he was losing a hundred dollars a day. He's very much put out, Miss Redmond." "Well, I was, too," said Agatha, but somehow her tone failed to satisfy the maid. To Agatha the thought of the dictatorial manager fluttering about New York in quest of a vanished singer--well, the picture had its humorous side. It had its serious side, too, for Agatha, of course, but for the moment she put off thinking about that. Lizzie, however, had borne the brunt of Mr. Straker's vexation, and, in that lumber-box she called her mind, she regarded the matter solely as her personal cue to come more prominently upon the stage. "Then your accompanist came every morning, as you had directed, Miss Redmond; and Madame Florio sent word a dozen times about those new gowns." Lizzie, with the memory of her sudden importance, almost took up the role of baffled innocence. "I declare, Miss Redmond, I didn't know what to do or say to those people. The whole thing seemed so irregular, with you not leaving any word of explanation with me." "That is true, Lizzie; it was irregular, and certainly very inconvenient. And it is serious enough, so far as breaking my engagements is concerned. But the circumstances were very unusual and--pressing. Some one else gave the message at the hotel, and, as you know, I had no time even to get a satchel." "That's what I said when the reporters came--that you were so worried over your sick relative that you did not wait for anything." Agatha groaned. "Did--did the papers have much to say about my leaving town?"