I hope you are quite well.' Margaret heard, and saw the child's face, and at once decided that, if the little girl knew of her own relationship to Ida Bamberger, she was certainly ignorant of the fact that her half-sister had been engaged to Mr. Van Torp, when she had died so suddenly less than a week ago.

'You were with Miss Bamberger when she died,' he said.

'If you think I'm a brute on account of what I told you about Miss Bamberger,' he said, 'that's not quite fair.

'For heaven's sake let poor Miss Bamberger rest in her grave!' 'Since you ask me why,' answered Mr. Van Torp, unmoved, 'I tell you all this because I want you to know more about me than you do.

You know very well that there's nobody like you, and that if I'd judged I had the slightest chance of getting you I would no more have thought of marrying Miss Bamberger than of throwing a million dollars into the sea after that book, or ten million, and that's a great deal of money.'

Doubtless, when she had talked with Mr. Van Torp just now, she had been disgusted by the indifferent way in which he spoke of poor Miss Bamberger's sudden death; it was still more certain that what he said about the book, and his very ungentlemanly behaviour in throwing it into the sea, had roused her justifiable anger.

'You saw the notice of Miss Bamberger's death, I suppose,' he said, turning his grey eyes to hers.

But Isidore Bamberger is not the man to spread out his troubles before the public in the newspapers.

Why?' 'First, because Bamberger is Van Torp's banker, broker, figure-head, and general representative on earth

He told me so, that afternoon when I walked with him.' 'Really!' Griggs was a little surprised, but as he did not connect Van Torp with the possibility that Miss Bamberger had been murdered, his thoughts did not dwell on the broken engagement.

But Bamberger and Van Torp are probably both of them aware by this time that I found the girl and carried her to the manager's room, and when they are ready to ask me what I know, or what I remember, the detective they are employing will suddenly appear to me in the shape of a new acquaintance in some out-of-the-way place, who will go to work scientifically to make me talk to him.

He will very likely have a little theory of his own, to the effect that since it was I who brought Miss Bamberger to Schreiermeyer's room, it was probably I who killed her, for some mysterious reason!' 'Shall you tell him about the drop of blood on your hand?' 'Without the slightest hesitation.

MR.I. BAMBERGER.

She might naturally have wondered, too, what he had felt when he had seen that board beside the door, and she could hardly have believed that he had gone in without so much as glancing at the yellowish letters that formed the name of Bamberger.

My engagement to Miss Bamberger was just a business affair.

Bamberger thought of it first, and suggested it to me, and he asked her if she'd mind being engaged to me for a few weeks; and she said she wouldn't provided she wasn't expected to marry me.

You see, Isidore H. Bamberger is the president and I only appear as a director, though most of it's mine.

Well, I felt talking was no good, and so did Bamberger, and the shares began to go down before the storm.

I don't say we didn't let the shares drop a couple of points further than they needed to, and Bamberger bought any of it that happened to be lying around, and the more he bought the quicker it wanted to go down, because people said there was going to be trouble and an investigation.

But if we'd gone on, lots of people would have been ruined, and yet we didn't just see how to stop it sharp, till Bamberger started his scheme.

But when everything was all right again we got tired of being engaged, Miss Bamberger and I; and besides, there was a young fellow she'd a fancy for, and he kept writing to her that he'd kill himself, and that made her nervous, you see, and she said if it went on another day she knew she'd have appendicitis or something.

It's not as if Bamberger and I had started a story on purpose about our quarrelling in order to make things go down.

'I'm sorry for poor Bamberger,' said Mr. Van Torp thoughtfully.

But if any one could be made responsible, I know Bamberger would do for him in some way.

Blood for blood is Bamberger's motto, every time.