“I do not think,” she said in a whisper, “that the thief came to steal any thing.”  She laid some emphasis upon the word.

Ralston took the bundle from her hands and stared at it.

“Good God!” he muttered.  He was astonished and more than astonished.  There was something of horror in his low exclamation.  He looked at the maid.  She was a woman of forty.  She had the look of a capable woman.  She was certainly quite self-possessed.

“Does your mistress know of this?” he asked.

The maid shook her head.

“No, sir.  I saw it upon the floor before she came to.  I hid it between the trunk and the wall.”  She spoke with an ear to the door of the room in which Violet lay, and in a low voice.

“Good!” said Ralston.  “You had better tell her nothing of it for the present.  It would only frighten her”; as he ended he heard Violet Oliver call out: 

“Adela!  Adela!”

“Mrs. Oliver wants me,” said the maid, as she slipped back into the bedroom.

Ralston walked slowly back down the corridor into the great hall.  He was carrying the bundle in his hands and his face was very grave.  He saw Dick Linforth in the hall, and before he spoke he looked upwards to the gallery which ran round it.  Even when he had assured himself that there was no one listening, he spoke in a low voice.

“Do you see this, Linforth?”

He held out the bundle.  There was a thick cloth, a sort of pad of cotton, and some thin strong cords.

“These were found in Mrs. Oliver’s room.”

He laid the things upon the table and Linforth turned them over, startled as Ralston had been.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“They were left behind,” said Ralston.

“By the thief?”

“If he was a thief”; and again Linforth said: 

“I don’t understand.”

But there was now more of anger, more of horror in his voice, than surprise; and as he spoke he took up the pad of cotton wool.

“You do understand,” said Ralston, quietly.

Linforth’s fingers worked.  That pad of cotton seemed to him more sinister than even the cords.

“For her!” he cried, in a quiet but dangerous voice.  “For Violet,” and at that moment neither noticed his utterance of her Christian name.  “Let me only find the man who entered her room.”

Ralston looked steadily at Linforth.

“Have you any suspicion as to who the man is?” he asked.

There was a momentary silence in that quiet hall.  Both men stood looking at each other.

“It can’t be,” said Linforth, at length.  But he spoke rather to himself than to Ralston.  “It can’t be.”

Ralston did not press the question.

“It’s the insolence of the attempt which angers me,” he said.  “We must wait until Mrs. Oliver can tell us what happened, what she saw.  Meanwhile, she knows nothing of those things.  There is no need that she should know.”