CHAPTER VI.
SUGGESTIONS FROM AN OLD FRIEND.
The look with which this amiable spinster met his eye was one which a stranger would have found it hard to understand.

He found it hard to understand himself, perhaps because he had never before seen this lady when she was laboring under an opinion of herself that was not one of perfect complacency.
"Miss Butterworth! What does this mean?
Have you----" "There!" The word came with some sharpness.

"You have detected me at my old tricks, and I am correspondingly ashamed, and you triumphant.

The gray parasol you have been good enough to send to my house is not mine, but I was in the room where you picked it up, as you have so cleverly concluded, and as it is useless for me to evade your perspicacity, I have come here to confess." "Ah!" The detective was profoundly interested at once.

He drew a chair up to Miss Butterworth's side and sat down.