“Look here, Wharton,” he said to me, “here is a curious business.  That fellow from Blocksby’s tells me that the Longepierre Theocritus disappeared yesterday afternoon; that I was the last person in whose hand it was seen, and that not only the man who always attends in the room but Lord Tarras and Mr. Wentworth, saw it in my hands just before it was missed.”

“What a nuisance!” I answered.  “You were looking at it when Miss Breton and I saw you, and you didn’t notice us; Does Thomas know when—­I mean about what o’clock—­the book was first missed?”

“That’s the lucky part of the whole worry,” said Allen.  “I left the rooms at three exactly, and it was missed about ten minutes to four; dozens of people must have handled it in that interval of time.  So interesting a book!”

“But,” I said, and paused—­“are you sure your watch was right?”

“Quite certain; besides, I looked at a church clock.  Why on earth do you ask?”

“Because—­I am awfully sorry—­there is some unlucky muddle; but it was exactly a quarter, or perhaps seventeen minutes, to four when both Miss Breton and I saw you absorbed in the Longepierre.”

“Oh, it’s quite impossible,” Allen answered; “I was far enough away from Blocksby’s at a quarter to four.”

“That’s all right,” I said.  “Of course you can prove that; if it is necessary; though I dare say the book has fallen behind a row of others, and has been found by this time.  Where were you at a quarter to four?”

“I really don’t feel obliged to stand a cross-examination before my time,” answered Allen, flushing a little.  Then I remembered that I was engaged to lunch at All Souls’, which was true enough; convenient too, for I do not quite see how the conversation could have been carried on pleasantly much further.  For I had seen him—­not a doubt about it.  But there was one curious thing.  Next time I met Miss Breton I told her the story, and said, “You remember how we saw Allen, at Blocksby’s, just as we were going away?”

“No,” she said, “I did not see him; where was he?”

“Then why did you smile—­don’t you remember?  I looked at him and at you, and I thought you smiled!”

“Because—­well, I suppose because you smiled,” she said.  And the subject of the conversation was changed.

It was an excessively awkward affair.  It did not come “before the public,” except, of course, in the agreeably mythical gossip of an evening paper.  There was no more public scandal than that.  Allen was merely ruined.  The matter was introduced to the notice of the Wardens and the other Fellows of St. Jude’s.  What Lord Tarras saw, what Mr. Wentworth saw, what I saw, clearly proved that Allen was in the auction-rooms, and had the confounded book in his hand, at an hour when, as he asserted, he had left the place for some time.  It was admitted by one of the people employed at the sale-rooms that Allen had been