relate, she actually had a key to the safe of which he,
her husband, knew nothing.

It had fallen out in this wise. The gentleman who
had come from London to superintend the fixing of
the safe had left an envelope for Manfred, or rather
he had asked for an envelope, then he had popped
inside it a piece of paper and something else.

"Look here, Mrs. Hegner!" he had exclaimed. "I
can't wait to see your husband, for I've got to get my
train back to town. Will you just give him this?
Many people only provide two keys to a safe, but our
firm always provides three."

She had waited till the man had gone, and then
she had at once gone upstairs and locked herself into
her bedroom with the new safe and the open envelope
containing the receipted bill and the three keys. One
of these keys she had put in her purse, and then she
had placed the bill, and the two remaining keys, in
a fresh envelope.

Polly didn't consider husbands and wives ought to
have any secrets from one another. But from the
very first, even when Manfred was still very much in
love with her -- aye, and very jealous of her too, for
the matter of that -- he had never told her anything.

For a long time she hadn't known just where to
keep her key of the safe, and it had lain on her mind
like a great big load of worry; she had felt obliged
to be always changing the place where she hid it.

Then, suddenly, Manfred had presented her with
an old-fashioned rosewood dressing-case he had taken
from some one in part payment of a small debt. And
in this dressing-case, so a friend had shown her, there
was a secret place for letters. You pushed back an

[[134]]

p133 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p134w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p135

v?