I proffered mine gravely, and she took it. She wiped the dusty streaks off her cheeks and pinned her hair in a funny knob on top of her head that would have made any other woman look like a caricature. But still she sat on the floor. "Now," she said, when she had jabbed the last hair-pin into place and tucked my handkerchief into her belt, "if you have been sufficiently amused, perhaps you will help me out of here." "Out of where?" "Do you suppose I'm sitting here because I like it?" "You have sprained your ankle," I said, with sudden alarm. In reply she brushed aside her gown, and for the first time I saw what had occurred. She was sitting half over a trap-door in the floor, which had closed on her skirts and held her fast. "The wretched thing!" she wailed. "And I have called until I am hoarse. I could shake Heppie! Then I tried to call you mentally. I fixed my mind on you and said over and over, 'Come, please come.' Didn't you feel anything at all?" "Good old trap-door!" I said. "I know I was thinking about you, but I never suspected the reason. And then to have walked past here twenty minutes ago! Why didn't you call me then?" I was tugging at the door, but it was fast, with the skirts to hold it tight. "I looked such a fright," she explained. "Can't you pry it up with something?" I tried several things without success, while Margery explained her plight. "I was sure Robert had not looked carefully in the old wine cellar," she said, "and then I remembered this trap-door opened into it. It was the only place we hadn't explored thoroughly. I put a ladder down and looked around. Ugh!" "What did you find?" I asked, as my third broomstick lever snapped. "Nothing--only I know now where Aunt Letitia's Edwin Booth went to. He was a cat," she explained, "and Aunt Letitia made the railroad pay for killing him." I gave up finally and stood back. "Couldn't you--er--get out of your garments, and--I could go out and close the door," I suggested delicately. "You see you are sitting on the trap-door, and--" But Margery scouted the suggestion with the proper scorn, and demanded a pair of scissors. She cut herself loose with vicious snips, while I paraphrased the old nursery rhyme, "She cut her petticoats all around about." Then she gathered up her outraged garments and fled precipitately. She was unusually dignified at dinner. Neither of us cared to eat, and the empty places--Wardrop's and Miss Letitia's--Miss Jane's had not been set--were like skeletons at the board. It was Margery who, after our pretense of a meal, voiced the suspicion I think we both felt. "It is a strange time for Harry to go away," she said quietly, from the library window. "He probably has a reason." "Why don't you say it?" she said suddenly, turning on me. "I know what you think. You believe he only pretended he was robbed!" "I should be sorry to think anything of the kind," I began. But she did not allow me to finish.