I arose betimes in the morning, despite the fact that I had been up most of the night, for I was determined to gain entrance to the Kingdon cottage and force an interview with Marcia Lawrence before I went to my appointment with her mother. Day had taken from my dream nothing of its vividness, but my nerves were normal again, and I could approach the task with a coolness which had not been possible the night before. That Marcia Lawrence had taken refuge with the Kingdons, I did not for an instant doubt; it was my business to prove it—to gain entrance to her presence and persuade her to grant Burr Curtiss a final interview.

There was another mystery about the cottage which piqued and puzzled me. What was the meaning of that light in the cellar? What work had been going forward there, hour after hour? Whose was that shrill and violent voice which had threatened me through the door? And how had it been possible for the other inmates of the house to sleep on undisturbed through all that commotion? If Miss Lawrence were really there, would she not have heard me?

I descended to the dining-room, revolving this problem in my mind, so intent upon it that I brushed into a man at the door. I turned to apologise and saw his face light up at sight of me.

"Why, hello, Lester," he cried, holding out his hand. "This is luck!"

"Hello, Godfrey," I answered, returning his clasp with interest. "Glad to see you."

"Not half so glad as I am to see you. Come over here to this side-table where we can talk in peace. Quite like the Studio, isn't it?"

I laughed responsively at the memory of that night when Jim Godfrey, of the Record, for purposes of his own, had kidnapped me and entertained me with a superb dinner at the famous Sixth Avenue resort. I had met him occasionally since, and had found him always the same genial, generous, astute fellow he had proved himself then. Trained on the detective force, he had been for some years the Record's star reporter, and was employed only on what the newspapers love to call causes cÉlÈbres. Of course, I knew instantly what "cause" it was had brought him to Elizabeth.

"Here on business?" he asked, as we sat down.

"Yes. And you?"

"Oh, I came down last night to write up this Lawrence-Curtiss affair. You've heard about it?"

He was looking at me keenly.

"Yes," I answered steadily, determined to keep him from guessing my connection with it; "I read about it in the papers last night. Queer affair, wasn't it?"

"Mighty queer. You haven't happened to form a theory about it, have you?"

I laughed outright. He had come to me for a theory once before, and here he was at his old trick.

"I haven't enough data to form a theory," I said.

"Well, maybe I can furnish you with more. I did some pretty lively work last night, and covered all the details I could think of."

"I haven't seen this morning's Record," I said. "Of course it's all there."

"Not quite all. I don't want to give the other fellows too much rope. They're all tied up in a knot, now, and I want them to stay that way."

"The 'other fellows,' I suppose, are your esteemed contemporaries?"

"In plain English, my hated rivals. But I don't mind telling you. You treated me square in the Holladay case. The boys told me afterwards how you refused to give me away."

"All right; fire ahead," I said, and cut my steak.

"Well," he began, "I saw at once, after I'd looked over the field and found out that it was impossible to see either Curtiss or Mrs. Lawrence, that the persons who could probably tell me most about the inside workings of this affair were the servants in the Lawrence house. Evidently there must have been trouble of some sort there; and it probably would not escape the servants' notice. So I went after them."

I nodded, but kept my eyes on my plate. Here was luck, indeed!

"There are five of them," he went on; "an outside man, who takes care of the grounds and horses; a cook, two house-girls, and a maid. The outside man is the husband of the cook; they and the house-girls stay at the place, and the maid lives with her sister in a cottage just off the grounds."

"And could they tell you anything?" I asked.

"Neither the man, the cook, nor the house-girls could tell me a thing. They'd all been busy preparing for the wedding, and didn't know anything was wrong until the maid, whose name is Lucy Kingdon, told them Miss Lawrence had disappeared. The house-girls had been passing back and forth all the time, and had caught a glimpse of Miss Lawrence now and then, but had noticed absolutely nothing unusual, had seen no stranger about the place, nor heard any outcry. One of them passed Miss Lawrence in the hall as she was talking with the decorator, and says that she was radiant with happiness.

"But the maid?" I asked, anxious to hear what he had got from her.

"Ah, she was different. She's been with the family a long time. She seems to be a kind of privileged character—a trusted confidante; though why any one should wish to trust her is beyond me—she's not an attractive woman, rather the reverse."

"And what did she tell you?"

"She didn't tell me anything," answered Godfrey, with some heat. "She beat about the bush and finally got angry. But I'm sure of one thing, and that is that she knows where Miss Lawrence is. Indeed," he added, "I'm pretty certain that Miss Lawrence passed the night in the Kingdon cottage."

"Why?" I asked, with lively interest at this confirmation of my own belief.

"I don't know—just a sort of intuition. And then—they wouldn't let me in to see."

"Oh—you tried to get in, did you?"

"I certainly did—tried my level best, but couldn't make it. Those Kingdon sisters are a pair of Tartars. Both of them were there. The elder one was a beauty when she was young, I fancy, but she's seen some trying times since, to judge from her face. She's got mighty handsome eyes, even yet—and my! how they can flash. Well, they sent me to the right-about as soon as they learned my errand. I tried all my wiles," he added, with a little rueful smile, "and in vain."

"But intuition's hardly enough to go on," I suggested.

"Of course there's more than that. It's the only house she could have reached without being seen. There's a path leads to it through a grove which screens it from the street. If she'd gone in any other direction, she'd have had to venture out into the open, where somebody would have been sure to see her. Remember, she was in her wedding-dress, and there were probably a good many people standing around watching the house, as they always do at these fashionable weddings."

Perhaps something in my face betrayed me; at any rate, he looked at me with a sudden intent interest.

"See here, Lester," he said, "I believe you're in on this thing yourself."

"Not for publication."

"Agreed. Now let's have it."

"Well," I explained, "I'm working for Curtiss. I'm trying to find Miss Lawrence. He thinks he's entitled to an explanation."

Godfrey nodded quickly.

"Any man would think so," he said. "How are you going about it?"

"I'm going to take advantage of the hint you just gave me."

"And go to the Kingdon house?"

"Yes. I believe Miss Lawrence is there, myself. I thought so last night when I came to it after following that path through the grove."

"So you'd discovered it, too! Well, I wish you luck. Of course, we may be all wrong. I don't believe there are any other pointers I can give you," he added, "or I'd be glad to. I suppose you saw Mrs. Lawrence?"

"Oh yes."

"How was she affected?"

"Not so deeply as you'd expect," I said.

He gazed at me with narrowed eyes.

"Has it occurred to you, Lester," he said, at last, "that Miss Lawrence may not have gone away of her own accord at all; that there may be a plot against her; that she was forced to go, or perhaps even shut up in some room in the Lawrence house?"

"Yes; I'd thought of it. I even put it to Mrs. Lawrence."

"And what did she say?"

"She laughed at me. She said her daughter was a strong girl, who wouldn't let herself be abducted without a struggle, and that a single scream would have alarmed the house."

"But suppose she'd been drugged," suggested Godfrey. "Then she would have neither screamed nor struggled."

"Last night," I said, "I was half-inclined to believe that something of the sort had happened. I'd forgotten one fact which absolutely disproves it. She left a note behind her—or, at least, wrote it and sent it back after she ran away."

"Ah—she did?"

"Yes—a note saying the marriage was impossible, though her love was unaltered, and that Curtiss wasn't to attempt to find her."

Godfrey sat suddenly upright with grim countenance.

"Then there's only one explanation of it," he said. "There's only one thing could make a girl drop everything and run away like that—only one thing in the world. She's already married, and her first husband's turned up."

"I'd thought of that, too; but her mother swears her daughter never had a love affair previous to this one."

"Of course she'd say so. Has any other possible explanation occurred to you?"

"No," I answered frankly. "And I've tried mighty hard to find another."

"Let's go back a bit. The discovery—whatever it was—was made at the last moment."

"Yes—at the moment she left the decorator and started upstairs to get her veil."

"Was it made accidentally?"

"I don't know."

"But I do. It was not accidentally—it was by design. Things don't happen accidentally, just in the nick of time."

"No," I agreed, "they don't."

"It was his revenge," continued Godfrey, with growing excitement. "He wanted to get even, and he waited till the last moment. It was certainly artistic."

"If he really wanted to crush her," I suggested, my lips trembling with the horror of the thought, "he'd have waited a little longer."

Godfrey stared at me with glittering eyes.

"You're right," he agreed, after a moment. "He didn't want to get even, then; he wanted her back. So he sent a letter——"

"It wasn't a letter. Perhaps it was a telegram."

"No, it wasn't a telegram—I looked that up. Are you sure it wasn't a letter?"

"Yes. The morning mail was delivered shortly after nine. She was happy as usual until the moment of her disappearance, two hours later. If it wasn't a letter or a telegram, he must have come in person."

Godfrey sat for a moment with intent face.

"I hardly think so," he said, at last. "Some one would have noticed a stranger, and I made special inquiries on that point, though it was a lover I was looking for, not a husband. I rather imagined that there was another man in the case, and that, at the last moment, she decided to marry him and ran away to do it."

"No," I said decidedly, "she was in love with Curtiss—passionately in love with him."

"Well, lover or husband, I don't believe he came in person. I think it much more probable that the warning came from inside the house."

"From the maid," I suggested.

"Precisely," he nodded. "From the maid."

Then, suddenly, I recalled the sweet face, the clear gaze——

"It's a pretty theory, Godfrey," I said; "but I don't believe it. Have you ever seen Miss Lawrence?"

"No—not even her photograph. I tried to get one and failed," he added, with rueful countenance.

"She's a beautiful woman—she's more than that—she's a good woman. There's something Madonna-like about her."

"Most of the famous Madonnas," he said, smiling, "however virginal in appearance, were anything but Madonna-like in behaviour—Andrea del Sarto's, for instance."

With a little shiver, I remembered Mr. Royce's phrase—it was to the del Sarto Madonna he had compared her! Could I be wrong in my estimate of her, after all?

"There's no other theory will explain her flight," he repeated. "Presuming, of course, that she was sane."

"She was very sane," I said, in a low voice. "She was a self-controlled, well-balanced woman."

"And that she still loves Curtiss."

"I'm sure she does."

"Then you'll find I'm right. But come," he added, rising, "I've got some work to do. I'll try to meet you as you come away from the Kingdon cottage. I'm curious to know what luck you'll have."

He left me at the hotel door and hurried away toward the business part of the town, while I turned in the opposite direction. Godfrey's confidence in his theory weighed upon me heavily. He was right in saying that it seemed the only tenable one, and yet, with the memory of Miss Lawrence's pure face before me, I could not believe it. I could not believe that those clear eyes sheltered such a secret. I could not believe that anything shameful had ever touched her. She had kept herself unspotted from the world. And I would prove it!

As I reached the Kingdon house and turned in at the gate, I remembered with a smile the resolution I had made the night before to buy a revolver. It seemed absurd enough in the light of the clear day—that I should arm myself against two women!

There was a flower-bed on either side the walk, well-kept and in a riot of bloom, and along the hedges and about the house were others. Evidently the women who lived here not only loved flowers, but had ample time to tend them. As I approached the house, I saw that the blinds were drawn, and there seemed no sign of life about the place, but the door was opened almost instantly in answer to my knock.

The woman who opened it, I knew at once for the elder Miss Kingdon, and my eyes were caught and my attention held by the bold, virile beauty of her face—a beauty which had, in a way, burnt itself out by its very fierceness. She resembled her sister, and yet there was something higher and finer about her. She gave me the impression of one who had passed through a fiery furnace—and not unscathed! I wondered, as Godfrey had, at the dark splendour of her eyes; I could fancy how they would burn and sparkle once she was roused to anger.

"This is Miss Kingdon?" I asked.

She bowed.

"I'm going to ask a favour, Miss Kingdon," I said, "the favour of a few moments' conversation."

"Are you a reporter?" she demanded, without seeking to soften the harshness of the question, and in an instant I knew that it was she who had threatened me through the door the night before, for the voice was the same and yet not the same. Then it had been edged and broken by a kind of frenzy; now it was almost domineering in its cool insolence. What was it had so shaken her? Fear at my knock at that hour of the night? Yet she seemed anything but a woman easily alarmed.

"No, I'm not a reporter," I answered, smiling as well as I could to hide the tumult of my thoughts. "My name is Lester, and I'm acting for Mr. Curtiss. I hope you'll grant my request."

She looked at me more closely, and her lips curved derisively.

"I've heard of you," she said.

"From your sister, no doubt. I had the pleasure of meeting her yesterday afternoon."

I could not wholly keep the irony out of my tone.

"I guess you didn't find out much from her," she retorted.

"Not half as much as she knew. I hope you'll be more frank with me."

She hesitated a moment longer, then stood aside.

"Very well; come in," she said, and as I entered, she pointed the way into a room at the right.

It was a large, pleasant room, well furnished and in excellent taste. On my first glance around, my eyes were caught and held by a portrait which occupied the place of honour on the wall opposite the front windows. It was a woman's head, life-size, evidently done from life, crude enough in execution, but of a woman so brilliantly beautiful that her face seemed to glow through the canvas, to rise superior to the lack of skill with which the artist had depicted her. There was something familiar about it, too—at least, I fancied so—and then I shook the thought away impatiently.

"Well?" asked a voice, and I turned to see that Miss Kingdon was waiting for me to speak. "Sit down," she added abruptly, and herself sat down opposite me, and gazed at me with fierce eyes that never wavered.

"Mr. Curtiss is naturally anxious," I began, "to find Miss Lawrence and to hear from her own lips the reason for her flight. He even thinks he has a certain right to know that reason. I'm trying to find where Miss Lawrence is."

"And why do you come here?" she asked with compressed lips.

"Because," I answered boldly, "I believe that Miss Lawrence came here when she left her home. She went first into the library, where she sat for a while until she decided what to do; then she opened the library window, descended from the balcony, and ran here along the path which leads through the trees to that gate out yonder. You received her and refused to allow any one to see her."

"I refused to allow the reporters to see her!" she cried. "Surely, you would have done as much!"

"Yes," I said, repressing as well as I could the sudden burst of triumph which glowed within me. "Yes—perhaps I should. But you'll not refuse me?"

She smiled grimly.

"That was cleverly done, Mr. Lester," she said. "Fortunately it's no longer a question of my consent or refusal."

"Miss Lawrence isn't here?"

"No; Miss Lawrence left here late last night."

"And went——"

"Ah, that I shall not tell."

I looked at her again and saw that by arguing I should be simply wasting my time. I saw something else, too—this woman also knew the reason for Marcia Lawrence's flight.

But she was looking at me with a sudden white intensity.

"It was you," she said hoarsely, "who knocked at the door in the middle of the night."

"Yes," I admitted, fascinated by her burning gaze, "it was I."

"Why did you do that?"

"I don't exactly know," I answered lamely, not daring to tell the truth. "I was passing the house and saw a light——"

"Where?" she demanded, her face contracting in a quick spasm.

"In the window yonder," and I heard her deep breath of relief. "I thought perhaps it was Miss Lawrence."

"It was I," she said, and I saw she was visibly forcing herself to go on. "I had been putting away some fruit in the cellar. Your knock at that hour startled me."

"Quite naturally," I assented. "I wonder at myself now for knocking."

"How did you happen to be passing the house at that time?" she asked suddenly.

"I'd been awakened by a bad dream and found I couldn't go to sleep again, so decided to walk a little. I walked in this direction, I suppose, because I was thinking about Miss Lawrence."

She was looking at me keenly, but saw that I spoke the truth and again gave a quick sigh of relief.

"Miss Lawrence was not here then?" I questioned, deciding to become the inquisitor in my turn.

"Oh, no; she had left several hours earlier. I was alone in the house—which rendered your knock all the more disquieting. My sister remained with Mrs. Lawrence last night," and she rose to indicate that my audience was at an end.

I rose somewhat reluctantly. I felt that she could tell me so much more, if she would. It was provoking to be so near success, and yet not to succeed.

"I'm sorry," I said, "that you refuse to tell me where Miss Lawrence has gone. I don't believe you're acting wisely—nor is she in running away. She should be brave enough to stay and face Mr. Curtiss. He has a right——"

"There are others who have rights," she cried, her self-control suddenly deserting her. "There are others who have waived their rights, and torn their hearts, and withered in silence——"

She stopped abruptly, and I saw the tremor which swept through her as she controlled herself.

"That is all," she said more calmly, but with working face. "Your parrot-like talk of Mr. Curtiss's rights provoked me," and she moved toward the door.

I paused for a last glance at the portrait, and again I was struck by its likeness to some one I knew.

"That is a most remarkable picture," I said. "The person who painted it seems to have been clumsy enough, and yet there is something vital and bewitching about it."

There was a signature scrawled in one corner, and I bent closer to decipher it.

"It was painted by a cousin of mine," said Miss Kingdon indifferently.

And suddenly the scrawl became intelligible.

"'Ruth Endicott,'" I read, with a quick glow of interest.

"What do you know of her?" she demanded, looking at me sharply.

"Nothing," I answered, as indifferently as I could. "Only, I should be interested to know how she developed. She seems to have had great talent."

"That was the last picture she ever painted," said Miss Kingdon shortly; then her eyes flamed suddenly and her face darkened, as she stepped close to the portrait and stared at it. "She was beautiful—beautiful!" she murmured hoarsely, and I knew that Ruth Endicott's last painting had been a portrait of herself.

And yet it was scarcely a portrait, either, for the features were barely indicated. But, gazing at it, one saw a woman there—a woman real and vital—and knew instinctively that she was beautiful. It was what I suppose would be called an impressionistic picture, but it differed from most impressionistic pictures in showing imagination in the artist instead of demanding it from the observer.

But why should that pictured face seem so familiar? Not in lineament, but in poise and expression it recalled some one vividly. There was no doubting the resemblance, but grope in my memory as I might, I could not place it.

"When you are quite ready," said Miss Kingdon, in a voice quivering with impatience, "I shall be glad to show you out."

I turned to find her glaring at me almost like a beast at bay. With an imperious gesture, which checked on my lips any questions I would have asked, she led the way out into the hall.

"You are at liberty to search the house," she said coldly, intercepting the glance I shot about me, "if you doubt my statement that Miss Lawrence is no longer here."

The thought flashed through my mind that I would welcome a chance to take a look into the cellar, and inspect the fruit which it had taken hours to arrange, but I did not dare suggest it.

"No," I protested; "I believe you," and in another moment I was in the street.

Godfrey was awaiting me.

"Well?" he asked.

"Not there," I said.

"But she was there?"

"Yes; it was there she took refuge—you were right about that; but she left late last night. I don't know how or where. Miss Kingdon refused to tell me."

He pondered this an instant with half-closed eyes.

"I don't think she can slip through our fingers," he said, at last. "Every one about here knows her."

"If she took the train," I suggested, "the agent may remember."

"Yes," he agreed. "And by the way," he added suddenly, "it was a letter which caused all this trouble."

"A letter?"

"Yes; a special-delivery letter. It was delivered at 11.15 o'clock yesterday morning. The boy mounted the steps and was going to ring the bell, when Miss Lawrence herself, who was just starting up the stairs, saw him and came to the door, which was open, and took the letter. It was addressed to her and she signed for it."

"Where was it from?" I asked.

"It was from New York, and across the front, in a bold hand, was written, 'Important—read at once.'"