"I picked this up on the floor, just outside," said I. "I was going to take it to the landlord; but then I thought perhaps it might be something of yours, as I found it close to the door of your room, so I had better ask you about it first."
The envelope was not fastened, as I had feared that if it were closed she would scruple to open it, which would be fatal to the success of my stratagem.
"Thank you," she answered, taking it from me carelessly. "I don't think it belongs to me, but I can soon see."
I was doing her hair at the time, and commanded an excellent view of her face reflected in the looking-glass opposite which she sat. Her expression of insouciance vanished like magic when she had undone the paper and seen what it contained. The colour rushed into her face, which softened for a moment in a way I had never before seen it do, then came a stern, rigid, haughty, resolute look, as though she would defy the whole world to discover whatever secret she chose to conceal.
She did not speak at first, but turned round the photograph again and again, examining both it and the paper in which it had been wrapped.
At last she said: "This certainly is my property; but I can't imagine how it came to be where you found it. I fully believed it to have been lost some time ago."
"Don't you think," I suggested, "that when you thought you had lost it, you had perhaps really only slipped it into your writing-case, or into some book or papers which you haven't happened to open since then until now? Then it fell out without your noticing it, and either you were at that time at the place where I picked it up, or else some one's dress may have swept it there from your room. It was very near to the door."
"That is possible, no doubt," she returned, thoughtfully. "Yet still, I can hardly believe it to have happened so. I felt as positive as one can be about anything, that it was not in an envelope at all, and that I had put it"—she hesitated a moment, and then finished, "somewhere else."
As she did not seem inclined to mention where she really had put it, I thought I had better pretend to suppose that its destination had been a photograph-album.
"It would be very easy to be mistaken about what you had done with it, though," said I. "Probably when it was given you it was in an envelope, and then you were interrupted just as you were going to stick it into your book, and after that you forgot all about it, and it got mislaid."