As they passed the old bureau on their way to their rooms, Elizabeth paused and laid her hand on it thoughtfully. "It hardly seems to me possible," she said, "that father should have kept such a secret all these years, and died without telling us of it. He must have seen the advertisements--he must have known what difficulties he was making for everybody. Perhaps he did not write those names on the picture--handwriting is not much to go by, especially when it is so old as that; you may see whole schools of boys or girls writing in one style. Perhaps father was at school with Mr. Yelverton's uncle. Perhaps mother knew Elizabeth Leigh. Perhaps she gave her the sketch--or she might have come by it accidentally. One day she must have found it--slipped in one of her old music-books, maybe--and taken it out to show father; and she put it up on the mantelpiece, and it slipped down behind, like Patty's opal. If it had been of so much consequence as it seems to us--if they had desired to leave no trace of their connection with the Yelverton family--surely they would have pulled the house down but what they would have recovered it. And then we have hunted the bureau over--we have turned it out again and again--and never found anything." "Mr. Brion thinks there are secret drawers," said Eleanor, who, of all the three, was most anxious that their golden expectations should be realised. "It is just the kind of cabinet work, he says, that is always full of hidden nooks and corners, and he is blaming himself that he did not search it more thoroughly in the first instance." "And he thinks," continued Patty, "that father seemed like a man with things on his mind, and believes he _would_ have told us had he had more warning of his death. But you know he was seized so suddenly, and could not speak afterwards." "Poor father--poor father!" sighed Elizabeth, pitifully. They thought of his sad life, in the light of this possible theory, with more tender compassion than they had ever felt for him before; but the idea that he might have murdered his brother, accidentally or otherwise--and for that reason had effaced himself and done bitter penance for the rest of his days--never for a moment occurred to them. "Well, we shall know by to-morrow night," said the elder sister, gently. "If the bureau does not yield fresh evidence, there is none that we can allow Mr. Brion, or anyone else, to act upon. The more I think it over, the more I see how easily the whole thing could be explained--to mean nothing so important as Mr. Brion thinks. And, for myself, I should not be disappointed if we found ourselves only Miss Kings, without fortune or pedigree, as we have always been. We are very happy as we are."