Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/259

 wanted to know, with an eagerness which instantly convinced Gaylor that she had seen such hairpins before, and was surprised to see this one now. He replied, teasingly, that he would tell her where he had found it, when she told him whose it was.

Mrs. Barnard temporized. "Was it in this room?"

"What do you think?" questioned the young man, with his innocent, dimpled smile.

"Well, it would be the strangest thing if it were here, considering never a morning goes by but the whole place is swept."

"Ah, then it's several days since the person has been to see you?"

"You do catch one up quick," said Rose. "Neither of the persons has set foot in this house for weeks, then, since you put it that way."

"Do two ladies of your acquaintance use this sort of silky brown hairpin?" asked Gaylor, not hiding his astonishment.

"One of them's not what you'd call a lady," said Rose, "but the other was."

"Was? She is dead, then? Do you mean Lady Hereward?"

"Yes. She used always to have hairpins like that. She would not let her maid put any other kind in her hair. These just matched it."

Gaylor was as much astonished as it was in his experienced soul to be. He had not once thought of Lady