on the landing, and finally, a little breathless and with an air of
great dignity, opened the door and walked into Ann Veronica's room. It
was a neat, efficient-looking room, with a writing-table placed with a
business-like regard to the window, and a bookcase surmounted by a
pig's skull, a dissected frog in a sealed bottle, and a pile of
shiny, black-covered note-books. In the corner of the room were two
hockey-sticks and a tennis-racket, and upon the walls Ann Veronica,
by means of autotypes, had indicated her proclivities in art. But Miss
Stanley took no notice of these things. She walked straight across to
the wardrobe and opened it. There, hanging among Ann Veronica's more
normal clothing, was a skimpy dress of red canvas, trimmed with cheap
and tawdry braid, and short--it could hardly reach below the knee. On
the same peg and evidently belonging to it was a black velvet Zouave
jacket. And then! a garment that was conceivably a secondary skirt.

Miss Stanley hesitated, and took first one and then another of the
constituents of this costume off its peg and surveyed it.

The third item she took with a trembling hand by its waistbelt. As she
raised it, its lower portion fell apart into two baggy crimson masses.

"TROUSERS!" she whispered.

Her eyes travelled about the room as if in appeal to the very chairs.

Tucked under the writing-table a pair of yellow and gold Turkish
slippers of a highly meretricious quality caught her eye. She walked
over to them still carrying the trousers in her hands, and stooped to
examine them. They were ingenious disguises of gilt paper destructively
gummed, it would seem, to Ann Veronicas' best dancing-slippers.