“Where did you find it?  Oh! where did you find it?  I have waited a week to know.  When, after Carlos’s sudden departure, I stood beside Clement’s death-bed and saw from the look he gave me that he could still feel and understand, I told him that you had succeeded in your task and that all was well with us.  But I was not able to tell him how you had succeeded or in what place the will had been found; and he died, unknowing.  But we may know, may we not, now that he is laid away and there is no more talk of our leaving this house?”

Violet smiled, but very tenderly, and in a way not to offend the mourner.  They were sitting in the library—­the great library which was to remain in Clement’s family after all—­and it amused her to follow the dreaming lady’s glances as they ran in irrepressible curiosity over the walls.  Had Violet wished, she could have kept her secret forever.  These eyes would never have discovered it.

But she was of a sympathetic temperament, our Violet, so after a moment’s delay, during which she satisfied herself that little, if anything, had been touched in the room since her departure from it a week before, she quietly observed: 

“You were right in persisting that you hid it in this room.  It was here I found it.  Do you notice that photograph on the mantel which does not stand exactly straight on its easel?”

“Yes.”

“Supposing you take it down.  You can reach it, can you not?”

“Oh, yes.  But what—­”

“Lift it down, dear Mrs. Quintard; and then turn it round and look at its back.”

Agitated and questioning, the lady did as she was bid, and at the first glance gave a cry of surprise, if not of understanding.  The square of brown paper, acting as a backing to the picture, was slit across, disclosing a similar one behind it which was still intact.

“Oh! was it hidden in here?” she asked.

“Very completely,” assented Violet.  “Pasted in out of sight by a lady who amuses herself with mounting and framing photographs.  Usually, she is conscious of her work, but this time she performed her task in a dream.”

Mrs. Quintard was all amazement.

“I don’t remember touching these pictures,” she declared.  “I never should have remembered.  You are a wonderful person, Miss Strange.  How came you to think these photographs might have two backings?  There was nothing to show that this was so.”

“I will tell you, Mrs. Quintard.  You helped me.”

“I helped you?”

“Yes.  You remember the memorandum you gave me?  In it you mentioned pasting photographs.  But this was not enough in itself to lead me to examine those on the mantel, if you had not given me another suggestion a little while before.  We did not tell you this, Mrs. Quintard, at the time, but during the search we were making here that day, you had a lapse into that peculiar state which induces you to walk in your sleep.  It was a short one, lasting but a moment, but in a moment one can speak, and, this you did—­”