mysterious-looking little door in Mr. Gordon's
dressing-room:

"' I have never seen that open,' said the
housekeeper;  it is two years since I was
engaged by Mr. Gordon to officiate as the
superintendent of his household, but no one
has ever passed through that door except
himself, I do not think you will find any
key for it, ladies.'

"We tried every key on the bunch, but the
door yielded to none. I flew down stairs to
Mary.

"' We have found Blue Beard's closet,' I
cried, ' and there is no key for it;—come,
come, we must not waste a moment.'

"Every nerve I had quivered with impatience
while Mary slowly ascended the stairs.
How slow and sluggish all the movements
were. But, in time, she stood with us before
the low, narrow door, and with hands
trembling from eagerness, she shook it till the
handle rattled noisily, but yielded nothing to
her grasp.

"' Here, then,' she said, turning and facing
us with a ghastly smile; ' here is the secret
we seek.'

"At this moment we heard the loud ringing
of a bell, and the sound of a man's step
and voice in the entrance-hall.

"'Blue Beard is come back! ' I cried, with
a vague feeling of apprehension, mingled with
a keen sense of the absurdity of our position.
I stole quietly into the gallery, and with
jealous caution peered into the lobby below.
There stood my husband. With an exclamation
of relief, I again flew down stairs and
threw my arms around him, crying, ' O, I
am glad you are come! ' His face was
stern and grave, and he looked prepared for
storms. I drew him into the library and
hastily explained our position. As I spoke
his eye rested upon a heap of papers on
the sofa, and instantly detected a ring con-
taining three keys. I seized them joyfully,
and ran up-stairs, closely followed by my
husband. Mary was leaning against the
locked door in the quietness of sheer exhaustion,
and large tears were falling slowly from
her eyes upon the floor. With irrepressible
eagerness she snatched the keys from me,
and at once fitted the largest into the lock;
but, before she could turn it, my husband's
restraining hand was laid upon her arm.

"' Mary,' he said, ' I advise you as your
friend not to open this closet, but wait and
ask Mr. Gordon, for an explanation of his
very mysterious conduct. What there may
be to affect your future happiness we can
none of us conjecture, but at present it is
his secret. Let it remain so.'

"' It is too late to wait now,' answered
Mrs. Wigley impatiently, 'they have roused
our curiosity, and it shall be satisfied at any
cost. I wish to know the worst.'

"To own the truth, I was heartily glad
of the old lady's decision, though it was
opposed to my husband's judgment. I, too, was
consumed by an inextinguishable curiosity
to fathom our enigma. Behind that door lay
the mysteries that had been all day arranging
themselves into numberless forms within
our busy brains, and now to wait for Mr.
Gordon's return, and then perhaps to be
denied an explanation, was a moral
impossibility. Mary slowly but resolutely opened
the door, and we all, even my husband,
looked into the unlighted closet with an
intense gaze; but there was manifested no
scene of horror or mechanism for future
purposes. In the darkness there was shaped
out only two small mahogany boxes,
something like violin-cases; here, then, lay the
very core and kernel of our haunting mystery
—the solving of the problem on which Mary's
future life depended.

"Nothing could have stayed us now. Mary
rapidly detached one of the keys for me, and
we knelt down to fit them into the minute
locks of the mahogany cases. We raised
the lids simultaneously, and our eager,
earnest eyes fell upon two wooden legs.

"I scarcely know what we felt the first few
minutes. It was not relief; for, though our
suspense was over, our astonishment was not
lessened. We had not the dignity of being
horror-stricken, nor the indignation of being
hoaxed: we were passively astonished. Mary
silently relocked the cases and the closet, and
we adjourned quietly to the library. A
spirit of deep musing had fallen upon us all.
Out of the profound abyss of contemplation,
suggestion after suggestion was summoned;
but none could satisfy us, or explain all the
circumstances of the case.

"We felt great excitement when the return
of the master of the house was heard. Mary
threw herself back into her chair, and my
husband and Mrs. Wigley rose to meet him
as he entered the room. Glancing keenly
round on our attitudes of expectation, and on
the littered room, he advanced and placed
himself behind Mary's chair.

"' Permit me,' he said, ' to give you an
intelligible explanation of my conduct before
you reproach me for my secrecy. My father
made a match for me when I was very
young with a relative who possessed much
wealth, but who had suffered an amputation.
She died about two years after our marriage,
and bequeathed her property to me, on
condition that if I married again it should be to
a woman similarly afflicted. A few years
after, I met with a lady possessing the necessary
qualification, and gifted with so much
sweetness and amiability of temper, that I
loved her truly. It suited me to watch over
and protect her, and we were very happy, but
for a few months only. Thus it happened that,
while quite a young man, I was a widower
for the second time. My last wife, with a
caprice at variance with her usual character,
had made a similar will to my first wife's;
and though I would have given up their
united fortunes had I found any one whom