Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/133

 her stepmother corroborated me by saying that she bought a box of candy every day or two.

"The rest was easy, and doesn't matter. But I could see that she was strictly chaperoned. She didn't go out of the room without Mrs. Lorsson's asking her where she was going, and from the conversation I inferred that she went nowhere alone. I was certain it was not only mere conventionality. Mrs. Lorsson watches her. As I was going out, a maid brought some letters in on a salver. One was for Miss Ruth. Mrs. Lorsson opened it calmly, as if it were for herself, glanced it over, and handed it to her stepdaughter. I have no doubt that the letters Miss Ruth writes are inspected as well."

"Isn't it awful?" sighed Valeska. "I thought that sort of thing had all gone by nowadays."

"Not when you have a stepdaughter, and an eligible young millionaire to marry her to," said Astro. "That woman is a tyrant and a schemer. There's little love lost in that family, I'm sure. But now look at the cipher again."

"First, let me think," Valeska said thoughtfully, holding the paper in her hand. "Here's a young girl who is having a young man, whom she doesn't like, forced on her. She is probably in love with another; but is not allowed to see him or to write to him. Well, I'd manage to communicate with him in some way."

"Yes, and you're clever, for eighteen, and you read the Bible every night after dinner."

"Oh!" Valeska's eyes grew bright. "Then these figures refer to Bible texts? But that was the way our grandmothers wrote, interlarding their messages with