If you hadn't been she'd of course have confessed to you--to keep me in the dark about the real one." Poor Voyt laughed out again.

"Oh you dear souls!" "Besides," his companion pursued, "I wasn't in want of that evidence." "Then what other had you ?" "Her state before you came--which was what made me ask you how much you had seen her.

And her state after it," Mrs.Dyott added.

"And her state," she wound up, "while you were here." "But her state while I was here was charming." "Charming.

That's just what I say." She said it in a tone that placed the matter in its right light--a light in which they appeared kindly, quite tenderly, to watch Maud wander away into space with her lovely head bent under a theory rather too big for it.