plays!" He stopped for want of words to
express his impatience, and drummed with
both hands on the lid of the musical-box, in
a burst of uncontrollable enthusiasm.

"Mr. Munder!" exclaimed the housekeeper,
hurrying across the room in great
indignation. "Why don't you look? why don't
you stop him? He's breaking open the
musical-box. Be quiet, sir! How dare you
touch me?"

"Set him going! set him going!"
reiterated Uncle Joseph, dropping Mrs.
Pentreath's arm, which he had seized in
his agitation. "Look here! this by my side
is a music-box, too! Set him going! Does
he play Mozart? He is three times bigger
than ever I saw! See! see! this box of
mine — this tiny bit of box that looks nothing
by the side of yours— it was given to my
own brother by the king of all the music-composers
that ever lived, by the divine Mozart
himself. Set the big box going, and you shall
hear the little baby-box pipe after! Ah,
dear and good madam, if you love me— "

"Sir!!!" exclaimed the housekeeper, reddening
with virtuous indignation to the very
roots of her hair.

"What do you mean, sir, by addressing
such outrageous language as that to a
respectable female?" inquired Mr. Munder,
approaching to the rescue. "Do you think
we want your foreign noises, and your
foreign morals, and your foreign profanity
here? Yes, sir! profanity. Any man who
calls any human individual, whether musical
or otherwise, 'divine,' is a profane man. Who
are you, you extremely audacious person?
Are you an infidel?"

Before Uncle Joseph could say a word in
vindication of his principles; before Mr.
Munder could relieve himself of any more
indignation, they were both startled into
momentary silence by an exclamation of
alarm from the housekeeper.

"Where is she?" cried Mrs. Pentreath,
standing in the middle of the drawing-room,
and looking with bewildered eyes all around
her.

The lady in the quiet dress had vanished.

She was not in the library, not in the
breakfast-room, not in the passage outside.
After searching in those three places, the
housekeeper came back to Mr. Munder with
a look of downright terror in her face, and
stood staring at him for a moment, perfectly
helpless and perfectly silent. As soon as she
recovered herself she turned fiercely on Uncle
Joseph.

"Where is she? I insist on knowing what
has become of her! You cunning, wicked,
impudent old man! where is she?" cried
Mrs. Pentreath, with no colour in her cheeks,
and no mercy in her eyes.

"I suppose, she is looking about the house
by herself" said Uncle Joseph. "We shall
find her surely as we take our walks through
the other rooms." Simple as he was, the
old man had, nevertheless, acuteness enough
to perceive that he had accidentally rendered
the very service to his niece of which
she stood in need. If he had been the
most artful of mankind, he could have
devised no better means of diverting Mrs.
Pentreath's attention from Sarah to himself
than the very means which he had just used
in perfect innocence, at the very moment when
his thoughts were farthest away from the
real object with which he and his niece had
entered the house. "So! so!" thought Uncle
Joseph to himself, "while these two angry
people were scolding me for nothing, Sarah
has slipped away to the room where the
letter is. Good! I have only to wait till
she comes back, and to let the two angry
people go on scolding me as long as they
please."

"What are we to do? Mr. Munder!
what on earth are we to do?" asked the
housekeeper. "We can't waste the precious
minutes staring at each other here. This
woman must be found. Stop! she asked
questions about the stairs— she looked up at
the second floor, the moment we got on the
landing. Mr. Munder! wait here, and don't
let that foreigner out of your sight for a moment.
Wait here while I run up and look
into the second-floor passage. All the bedroom
doors are locked— I defy her to hide
herself if she has gone up there." With those
words, the housekeeper ran out of the drawing-room,
and breathlessly ascended the
second flight of stairs.

While Mrs. Pentreath was searching on
the west side of the house, Sarah was hurrying,
at the top of her speed, along the
lonely passages that led to the north rooms.

Terrified into decisive action by the desperate
nature of the situation, she had slipped
out of the drawing-room into the passage the
instant she saw Mrs. Pentreath's back turned
on her. Without stopping to think, without
attempting to compose herself, she ran down
the stairs of the first floor, and made straight
for the housekeeper's room. She had no
excuses ready, if she had found anybody
there, or if she had met anybody on the way.
She had formed no plan where to seek for
them next, if the keys of the north rooms
were not hanging in the place where she still
expected to find them. Her mind was lost
in confusion, her temples throbbed as if they
would burst with the heat at her brain.
The one blind, wild, headlong purpose of
getting into the Myrtle Room drove her on,
gave unnatural swiftness to her trembling
feet, unnatural strength to her shaking hands,
unnatural courage to her sinking heart.

She ran into the housekeeper's room, without
even the ordinary caution of waiting for
a moment to listen outside the door. No one
was there. One glance at the well-remembered
nail in the wall showed her the keys
still hanging to it in a bunch, as they had
hung in the long past time. She had them