"Must I put it back, sir, on the floor, between the bed and the wall?" she inquired, with an ironical assumption of the humblest deference to my wishes. "_That's_ where the girl found it when she was sweeping the room. Anybody can see for themselves,"pursued the housekeeper indignantly, "that the poor gentleman has gone away broken-hearted.
And there, in my opinion, is the hussy who is the cause of it!"With those words, she made me a low curtsey, and laid a small photographic portrait on the desk at which I was sitting.
I looked at the photograph.
In an instant, my heart was beating wildly--my head turned giddy--the housekeeper, the furniture, the walls of the room, all swayed and whirled round me.
The portrait that had been found in my senior pupil's bedroom was the portrait of Jeromette!
IX.
I HAD sent the housekeeper out of my study. I was alone, with the photograph of the Frenchwoman on my desk.
There could surely be little doubt about the discovery that had burst upon me. The man who had stolen his way into my house, driven by the terror of a temptation that he dared not reveal, and the man who had been my unknown rival in the by-gone time, were one and the same!