“No, I wore it on a chain about my neck.  Though I had no reason to mistrust any one in the house, I felt that I could not guard this key too carefully.  I even kept it on at night.  In fact it never left me.  It was still on my person when I went into the room with Mr. Delahunt.  But the safe had been opened for all that.”

“There were two keys to it, then?”

“No; in giving me the key, my brother had strictly warned me not to lose it, as it had no duplicate.”

“Mrs. Quintard, have you a special confidant or maid?”

“Yes, my Hetty.”

“How much did she know about this key?”

“Nothing, but that it didn’t help the fit of my dress.  Hetty has cared for me for years.  There’s no more devoted woman in all New York, nor one who can be more relied upon to tell the truth.  She is so honest with her tongue that I am bound to believe her even when she says—­”

“What?”

“That it was I and nobody else who took the will out of the safe last night.  That she saw me come from my brother’s room with a folded paper in my hand, pass with it into the library, and come out again without it.  If this is so, then that will is somewhere in that great room.  But we’ve looked in every conceivable place except the shelves, where it is useless to search.  It would take days to go through them all, and meanwhile Carlos—­”

“We will not wait for Carlos.  We will begin work at once.  But just one other question.  How came Hetty to see you in your walk through the rooms?  Did she follow you?”

“Yes.  It’s—­it’s not the first time I have walked in my sleep.  Last night—­but she will tell you.  It’s a painful subject to me.  I will send for her to meet us in the library.”

“Where you believe this document to lie hidden?”

“Yes.”

“I am anxious to see the room.  It is upstairs, I believe.”

“Yes.”

She had risen and was moving rapidly toward the door.  Violet eagerly followed her.

Let us accompany her in her passage up the palatial stairway, and realize the effect upon her of a splendour whose future ownership possibly depended entirely upon herself.

It was a cold splendour.  The merry voices of children were lacking in these great halls.  Death past and to come infused the air with solemnity and mocked the pomp which yet appeared so much a part of the life here that one could hardly imagine the huge pillared spaces without it.

To Violet, more or less accustomed to fine interiors, the chief interest of this one lay in its connection with the mystery then occupying her.  Stopping for a moment on the stair, she inquired of Mrs. Quintard if the loss she so deplored had been made known to the servants, and was much relieved to find that, with the exception of Mr. Delahunt, she had not spoken of it to any one but Clement.  “And he will never mention it,” she declared, “not even to his wife.  She has troubles enough to bear without knowing how near she stood to a fortune.”