"Unhappily," she repeated. "What do you mean by that word?" And she drew back looking very much displeased. I had expected this and so was not thrown off my guard. "I mean," I proceeded calmly, "that if you had had such a companion with you on that morning I should now be able to put my question to him, instead of taking up your time and interrupting your affairs by my importunities." She lost her look of anger and acquired one of doubt. Did she survey me so closely because she was anxious to know if I had compromised her in the eyes of her intended husband? Or was her expression merely that natural to innocence equally startled and perplexed? I could not determine. "You will tell me just what you mean?" said she earnestly. I was equally emphatic in my reply. "That is only just. You ought to know why I trouble you with this matter. It is because this letter of which I speak was taken from its hiding place by some one who went into the hotel parlor between the hours of half past ten and twelve, and to my certain knowledge only three persons crossed its threshold on that especial morning at that especial time. I naturally appeal to each of them in turn for an answer to the problem that is troubling me. You know Miss N. Seeing by accident a letter addressed to her lying in a Bible in a strange hotel, you might think it your duty to take it out and carry it to her. If you did and if you lost it----" "But I didn't," she interrupted warmly. "I know nothing about any such letter, and if you had not declared so positively that I was in that hotel on that especial day, I should be tempted to deny that, too, for I have no recollection of going there last month." "Not for the purpose of rearranging a veil that had been blown off?" "Oh!" she said, but as one who recalls a forgotten fact, not as one who is tripped up in an evasion. I began to think her innocent and lost some of the gloom which had been oppressing me. "You remember now," said I. "Oh, yes, I remember that." Her manner so completely declared that her acknowledgments stopped there, I saw it would be useless to venture further. If she were innocent she could not tell more, if she were guilty she would not; so feeling that the inclination of my belief was in favor of the former hypothesis, I again took her hand and said: "I see that you can give me no help. I am sorry, for the whole happiness of a man, and perhaps that of a woman also, depends upon the discovery as to who took the letter from out the Bible where I had hidden it on that unfortunate morning." And making her another low bow, I was about to take my departure when she grasped me impulsively by the arm. "What man?" she whispered, and in a lower tone still, "What woman?"