The mended bowl was again in its place upon the Chinese table, the beautiful yellow porcelain shining in the silvery light.
"I wonder if Arthur really didn't do it?" thought Teddy. "It is the queerest, strangest thing that ever happened. I wish we could find out about it."
She thought about this for some time, and then spying a Chinese puzzle which hung from a corner of a cabinet, she took it down and began to play with it. It was composed of a number of slender sticks of carved ivory which were strung horizontally upon silken cords of various colors. Theodora had seen it before, and she never wearied of slipping the sticks up and down the silk, first disclosing a dozen cords, then but two or three, sometimes more, sometimes less, the mechanism of which constituted the puzzle. She worked at it for ten minutes, sitting in the full glory of the moonlight; and then suddenly she became conscious that she was not alone in the room.
A slight, almost imperceptible noise behind her, the faintest of movements in the back of the room, told her that unquestionably some one was there!