but too distant to be altogether recognisable, roused doubts which once
awakened changed the whole tenor of my thoughts and would not let me rest
till I had probed the house from top to bottom. To find Carmel Cumberland
alone in this desolation was a mystifying discovery to which I had found
it hard enough to reconcile myself. But Carmel here in company with
another at the very moment when I had expected the fruition of my own
joy,--ah, that was to open hell's door in my breast; a possibility too
intolerable to remain unsettled for an instant. Though she had passed out
before my eyes in a drooping, almost agonised condition, not she, dear as
she was, and great as were my fears in her regard, was to be sought out
first, but the man! The man who was back of all this, possibly back of my
disappointment; the man whose work I may have witnessed, but at whose
identity I could not even guess.

Leaving the window, I groped my way along the wall until I reached the
rack where the man's coat and hat hung. Whether it was my intention to
carry them away and hide them, in my anxiety to secure this intruder and
hold him to a bitter account for the misery he was causing me, or whether
I only meant to satisfy myself that they were the habiliments of a
stranger and not those of some sneaking member of the club, is of little
importance in the light of the fact which presently burst upon me. The
hat and coat were gone. Nothing hung from the rack. The wall was free
from end to end. She had taken these articles of male apparel with her;
she had not gone forth into the driving snow, unprotected, but--

I did not know what to think. No acquaintanceship with her girlish
impulses, nothing that had occurred between us before or during this
night, had prepared me for a freak of this nature. I felt backward
along the wall; I felt forward; I even handled the pegs and counted
them as I passed to and fro, touching every one; but I could not alter