“And you believed her?” I suggested.
“Implicitly.”
“In what direction, then, do your suspicions turn?”
“Alas! in no direction. That is the trouble. I don’t know whom to mistrust. It was because I was told that you had the credit of seeing light where others can see nothing but darkness, that I have sought your aid in this emergency. For the uncertainty surrounding this matter is killing me and will make my sorrow quite unendurable if I cannot obtain relief from it.”
“I do not wonder,” I began, struck by the note of truth in her tones. “And I shall certainly do what I can for you. But before we go any further, let us examine this scrap of newspaper and see what we can make out of it.”
I had already noted two or three points in connection with it, to which I now proceeded to direct her attention.
“Have you compared this notice,” I pursued, “with such others as you find every day in the papers?”
“No,” was her eager answer. “Is it not like them all——”
“Read,” was my quiet interruption. “‘On this day at the Colonnade—’ On what day? The date is usually given in all the bona-fide notices I have seen.”
“Is it?” she asked, her eyes moist with un-shed tears, opening widely in her astonishment.