"I do not even remember being at that hotel at all," she protested. "Did Mr. Taylor say I was there?" she inquired, with just that added look of exquisite näivete which the utterance of a lover's name should call up on the face of a prospective bride.
"No," I answered gravely; "Mr. Taylor, unhappily, was not with you that morning." She looked startled.
"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 questions to him, instead of taking your time and interrupting your affairs by my importunities."
"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 10:30 and 12 o'clock, and as 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 have thought 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.