But, alas! for the prosaicness of this workaday world, they had to assume the attitudes of lawyer and client; and discourse of crime instead of love. The situation was a trifle ironical, and must have provoked the laughter of the gods. "Well?" asked Miss Vrain, getting to business as soon as Lucian was seated, "and what have you found out?" "A great deal likely to be of service to us. And you?" "I!" replied Miss Vrain in a satisfied tone. "I have discovered that the stiletto with the ribbon is gone from the library." "Who took it away?" "No one knows. I can't find out, although I asked all the servants; but it has been missing from its place for some months." "Do you think Mrs. Vrain took it?" "I can't say," replied Diana, "but I have made one discovery about Mrs. Vrain which implicates her still more in the crime. She was not in Berwin Manor on Christmas Eve, but in town." "Really!" said Lucian much amazed. "But Link was told that she spent Christmas in the Manor at Bath." "So she did. Link asked generally, and was answered generally. Mrs. Vrain went up to town on Christmas Eve and returned on Christmas Day; but," said Diana, with emphasis, "she spent the night in town, and on that night the murder was committed." Lucian produced his pocketbook and took therefrom the fragment of gauze, which he handed to Diana. "I found this on the fence at the back of No. 13," he said. "It is a veil--a portion of a velvet-spotted veil." "A velvet-spotted veil!" cried Diana, looking at it. "Then it belongs to Lydia Vrain. She usually wears velvet-spotted veils. Mr. Denzil, the evidence is complete--that woman is guilty!" CHAPTER XIII GOSSIP Going by circumstantial evidence, Diana certainly had good grounds to accuse Mrs. Vrain of committing the crime, for there were four points at least which could be proved past all doubt as incriminating her strongly in the matter. In the first place, the female shadow on the blind seen by Lucian, showed that a woman had been in the habit of entering the house by the secret way of the cellar, and during the absence of Vrain. Secondly, the finding of the parti-coloured ribbon in the Silent House, which had been knotted round the handle of the stiletto by Diana, and the absence of the stiletto itself from its usual place on the wall of the Berwin Manor library, proved that the weapon had been removed therefrom to London, and, presumably, used to commit the deed, seeing that otherwise there was no necessity for its presence in the Geneva Square mansion. Thirdly, Diana had discovered that Lydia had spent the night of the murder in town; and, lastly, she also declared that the fragment of gauze found by Lucian on the dividing fence was the property of Mrs. Vrain. This quartette of charges was recapitulated by Diana in support of her accusation of her stepmother.