When from the rear drawing-room the grand piano sent upwards to Mrs. De Peyster its first strains, they were rapid, careless scales and runs.  Quite as she’d expected.  Then the player began Chopin’s Ballade in G Minor.  Mrs. De Peyster listened contemptuously; then with rebellious interest; then with complete absorption.  That person below could certainly play the piano—­brilliantly, feelingly, with the touch and insight of an artist.  Mrs. De Peyster’s soul rose and fell with the soul of the song, and when the piano, after its uprushing, almost human closing cry, fell sharply into silence, she was for the moment that piano’s vassal.

Then she remembered who was the player.  Instinctively her emotions chilled; and she lay stiffly in bed, hostile, on guard, defying the charm of the further music.

Suddenly the piano broke off in the very middle of Liszt’s Rhapsodic Number Twelve.  The way the music snapped off startled her.  There was something inexplicably ominous about it.  Intuitively she felt that something was happening below.  She wondered what it could be.

An hour passed; she continued wondering; then Matilda entered the attic room, behind her Mr. Pyecroft and Mary.

“Sister”—­such familiarity was difficult to Matilda, even though she knew this familiarity was necessary to maintain the roles circumstances and Mr. Pyecroft had forced upon them—­“sister,” she quavered, “I thought you might be interested to know that the bell rang awhile ago, and I went down, and there was a man—­with a note to me from—­from Mrs. De Peyster.”

“What!” exclaimed Mrs. De Peyster, in an almost natural tone.

“It—­it’s disturbed us all so much that I thought you might like to look at it.  Here it is.”

Shakingly, Matilda held out a sheet of paper.  Shakingly, but without turning to face her visitors, Mrs. De Peyster took it.  There was enough light to see that the letter was written on heavy paper embossed at the top with a flag and “S.S.  Plutonia,” and was dated the evening she had supposedly gone on board.  The note read:—­

  DEAR MATILDA:—­

Just at this late moment I recall something which, in the hurry of getting off, I forgot to tell you about.  This is that I left instructions with Mr. Howard, an expert cabinet-maker, who has previously done things for me under the supervision of the Tiffany Studios, to go over all my furniture while I am abroad and touch up and repair such pieces as may be out of order.  I am sending this letter to Mr. Howard for him or his representative to present for identification to you when he is ready to undertake the work.  See that he has every facility.

Mrs. De Peyster lay dizzily still.  Such an order she had never given.  But the writing was amazingly similar to her own.

“Well, Matilda?” she managed to inquire, in a voice she tried to make like the sickly Angelica’s.