“There’s the proof,” Florrie said simply, choking a sob.

Elaine looked with a start.  Sure enough, there was the neat living room in the house on Prospect Avenue.  In one picture Florrie had her arms over Kennedy’s shoulders.  In the other, apparently, they were passionately kissing.

Elaine slowly laid the photographs on the table.

“Please—­please, Miss Dodge—­give me back my lost love.  You are rich and beautiful—­I am poor.  I have only my good looks.  But—­I—­ I love him—­and he—­loves me—­and has promised to marry me.”

Filled with wonder, and misgivings now, and quite as much embarrassed at the woman’s pleadings as the woman herself had acted a moment before, Elaine tried to wave her off.

“Really—­I—­I don’t know anything about all this.  It—­it doesn’t concern me.  Please—­go.”

Florrie had broken down completely and was weeping softly into a lace handkerchief.

She moved toward the door.  Elaine followed her.

“Jennings—­please see the lady to the door.”

Back in the drawing room, Elaine almost seized the photographs and hurried into the library where she could be alone.  There she stood gazing at them—­doubt, wonder, and fear battling on her plastic features.

Just then she heard the bell and Jennings in the hall.

She shoved the photographs away from her on the table.

It was Kennedy himself, close upon the announcement of the butler.  He was in a particularly joyous and happy mood, for he had stopped at Martin’s.

“How are you this afternoon?” he greeted Elaine gaily.

Elaine had been too overcome by what had just happened to throw it off so easily, and received him with a quickly studied coolness.

Still, Craig, man-like, did not notice it at once.  In fact he was too busy gazing about to see that neither Jennings, Marie, nor the duenna Aunt Josephine were visible.  They were not and he quickly took the ring from his pocket.  Without waiting, he showed it to Elaine.  In fact, so sure had he been that everything was plain sailing, that he seemed to take it almost for granted.  Under other circumstances, he would have been right.  But not tonight.

Elaine very coolly admired the ring, as Craig might have eyed a specimen on a microscope slide.  Still, he did not notice.

He took the ring, about to put it on her finger.  Elaine drew away.  Concealment was not in her frank nature.

She picked up the two photographs.

“What have you to say about those?” she asked cuttingly.

Kennedy, quite surprised, took them and looked at them.  Then he let them fall carelessly on the table and dropped into a chair, his head back in a burst of laughter.

“Why—­that was what they put over on Walter,” he said.  “He called me up early this afternoon—­told me he had discovered one of these poisoned kiss cases you have read about in the papers.  Think of it—­all that to pull a concealed camera!  Such an elaborate business—­just to get me where they could fake this thing.  I suppose they’ve put some one up to saying she’s engaged?”