the house up. If it don't"—the jovial voice sank for a moment to a lower key—"it's not so much the money itself I mind—that's only a few hundred pounds, and some circular notes which can't be negotiated—it's the letters and papers and private mementos. There were things in that purse"—and the voice still sank lower to an unexpected softness—"that I wouldn't have lost—well, not for a good many thousands."
Guy's heart smote him at those words with poignant remorse. He thought of the child's hair, and blushed crimson with shame. Erect and solemn he strode into the office. "Sir Richard Lavers," he said slowly, "I want to speak with you alone one moment in the salon."
"Eh?" Sir Richard said sharply, turning round. "Oh, it's you. Why, certainly." And he followed the painter into the room with a some-what sheepish air, like a detected felon.
"There's your purse."
Guy shut the door tight. Then he laid down that cursed thing with a shudder on the table. "There's your purse," he said curtly, without one word of explanation.
Sir Richard looked at it with distinct pleasure. "You picked it up," he said, smiling.
"No," Guy answered, disdaining to tell a lie; "I stole it."
Sir Richard sat down on a chair, with his hands on his knees, and stared at him curiously for ninety seconds. Then he burst into a loud laugh, and exclaimed, much amused, "Well, anyhow, there's no reason to pull such a long face about it."
Guy dropped into a seat opposite him, and told him all his tale, extenuating nothing, in frank self-accusation. Sir Richard listened intent, with a smile on his mouth and a twinkle in his eyes of good-natured acquiescence.
"Then it was you who woke me up," he said, "when I went to shut the window. Well, you're a deuced brave chap, that's all I've got to say, to come this morning and tell me the truth about it. Why didn't you say you picked it up in the passage? I led up to it straight. That's what beats me utterly!"
"Because it would have been a lie," Guy answered frankly. "And I'd rather own up than tell you a lie about it."
Sir Richard opened the purse and turned the things over carefully. "Why, it's all here right enough," he said, in a tone of bland surprise. You haven't taken anything out of it!"
"No, of course not," Guy replied, almost smiling, in spite of himself, at the man's perfect naïveté.
Sir Richard eyed him hard with a curiously amused glance. "But, I say, look here, you know," he remonstrated, quietly; "you are a precious inefficient sort of burglar, aren't you? You won't have anything now to pay your bill with on Monday." For Guy had not concealed from him the plain reason for his onslaught upon the sacred rights of property.
"No, I must do without as best I can," Guy answered, somewhat glum. For he stood still face to face with that original problem.
Sir Richard stared at him once more with that same curious expression. "Tell me," he said, after a short pause, "did you look at any of the letters or things in this pocket-book?"
"Not one," Guy answered honestly, with the ring of truth in his voice. "I saw they
