Was she running straight into some fatal trap, ingeniously baited with her brother’s portrait?  Would the Sheriff in X——­, would Mr. Dunbar himself, recognize her in her gray disguise?  She walked to a mirror set in the wall, and stared at her own image, put up one hand and pushed out of sight every ring of hair that showed beneath the white cap frill; then reassured, resumed her seat.  How long the waiting seemed.

Somebody’s pet Skye terrier, blanketed with scarlet satin embroidered with a monogram in gilt, had defied the bienseance of fashionable canine and feline etiquette, by flying at somebody’s sedate, snowy Maltese cat, whose collar of silver bells jangled out of tune, as the combatants rolled on the velvet carpet, swept like a cyclone through the reception room, fled up the corridor.  Two pretty children, gay as paroquets, in their cardinal plush cloaks, ran to the piano and began a furious tattoo, while their nurse gossiped with the bell boy.

With her hands locked around the portfolio, Beryl sat watching the door; and at last the policeman appeared at the threshold, where he paused an instant, then vanished.

A gentleman apparently forty years of age came in, and approached her.  He was short in stature, florid, slightly bald; wore mutton chop whiskers, and a traveling suit of gray tweed broadly checked.

Beryl rose, the stranger bowed.

“Ah, you have my sketch book!  Madam, I am eternally your debtor.  Intrinsically worthless, perhaps; yet there are reasons which make it inestimably valuable to me.”

“I picked it up from the pavement, and though I opened and examined it, you will find the contents intact.  Will you look through it?”

“Oh!  I dare say it is all right.  No one cares for unfinished sketches, and these are mere studies.”

He untied the thongs, turned over a dozen or more papers, then closed the lid, and put his hand in his pocket.

“I offered a reward to—­”

“I wish no fee, sir; but the policeman has taken some trouble in the matter, and without his aid I should probably not have been able to restore it.  Pay him what you promised, or may deem proper; and then permit me to ask for some information, which I think you can give me.”

She beckoned to the officer who looked in just then; and when the money had been counted into his hand, the latter lifted his cap.

“Sister, shall I see you safe on the car?”

“Thank you, no.  I can find my way home.  I teach drawing at the ‘Anchorage’, and desire to ask a few questions of this gentleman, who I am sure is an artist.”

When the policeman had left them, Beryl took the portfolio and opened it, while the owner watched her curiously, striving to penetrate the silver gray folds of her veil.

“May I ask whether you expect to leave America immediately?”

“I expect to sail on the steamer for Liverpool next Saturday.”