“Is this description true?” Mr. Gryce asked, seemingly of Mrs. Daniels, though his gaze rested with curious intentness on the girl’s head which was covered with a little cap.

“Sufficiently so,” returned Mrs. Daniels in a very low tone, however.  Then with a sudden display of energy, “Emily’s figure is not what you would call plump.  I have seen her—­” She broke off as if a little startled at herself and motioned Fanny to go.

“Wait a moment,” interposed Mr. Gryce in his soft way.  “You said the girl’s hair and eyes were dark; were they darker than yours?”

“O, yes sir;” replied the girl simpering, as she settled the ribbons on her cap.

“Let me see your hair.”

She took off her cap with a smile.

“Ha, very pretty, very pretty.  And the other girls?  You have other girls I suppose?”

“Two, sir;” returned Mrs. Daniels.

“How about their complexions?  Are they lighter too than Emily’s?”

“Yes, sir; about like Fanny’s.”

Mr. Gryce spread his hand over his breast in a way that assured me of his satisfaction, and allowed the girl to go.

“We will now proceed to the yard,” said he.  But at that moment the door of the front room opened and a gentleman stepped leisurely into the hall, whom at first glance I recognized as the master of the house.  He was dressed for the street and had his hat in his hand.  At the sight we all stood silent, Mrs. Daniels flushing up to the roots of her gray hair.

Mr. Blake is an elegant-looking man as you perhaps know; proud, reserved, and a trifle sombre.  As he turned to come towards us, the light shining through the windows at our right, fell full upon his face, revealing such a self-absorbed and melancholy expression, I involuntarily drew back as if I had unwittingly intruded upon a great man’s privacy.  Mr. Gryce on the contrary stepped forward.

“Mr. Blake, I believe,” said he, bowing in that deferential way he knows so well how to assume.

The gentleman, startled as it evidently seemed from a reverie, looked hastily up.  Meeting Mr. Gryce’s bland smile, he returned the bow, but haughtily, and as it appeared in an abstracted way.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” proceeded my superior.  “I am Mr. Gryce from the detective bureau.  We were notified this morning that a girl in your employ had disappeared from your house last night in a somewhat strange and unusual way, and I just stepped over with my man here, to see if the matter is of sufficient importance to inquire into.  With many apologies for the intrusion, I stand obedient to your orders.”

With a frown expressive of annoyance, Mr. Blake glanced around and detecting Mrs. Daniels, said:  “Did you consider the affair so serious as that?”

She nodded, seeming to find it difficult to speak.

He remained looking at her with an expression of some doubt.  “I can hardly think,” said he, “such extreme measures were necessary; the girl will doubtless come back, or if not—­” His shoulders gave a slight shrug and he took out his gloves.