Troy retreated to a bookcase at the further end of the room.
The books fitted the shelves to such absolute perfection that he had
some difficulty in taking one of them out. When he had succeeded, he
found himself in possession of a volume of the History of England. On
the fly-leaf he encountered another written warning:--"This book belongs
to Miss Pink's Academy for Young Ladies, and is not to be removed from
the library." The date, which was added, referred to a period of ten
years since. Miss Pink now stood revealed as a retired schoolmistress,
and Mr. Troy began to understand some of the characteristic
peculiarities of that lady's establishment which had puzzled him up to
the present time.
He had just succeeded in putting the book back again when the door
opened once more, and Isabel's aunt entered the room.
If Miss Pink could, by any possible conjuncture of circumstances, have
disappeared mysteriously from her house and her friends, the police
would have found the greatest difficulty in composing the necessary
description of the missing lady. The acutest observer could have
discovered nothing that was noticeable or characteristic in her personal
appearance. The pen of the present writer portrays her in despair by a
series of negatives. She was not young, she was not old; she was neither
tall nor short, nor stout nor thin; nobody could call her features
attractive, and nobody could call them ugly; there was nothing in her
voice, her expression, her manner, or her dress that differed in any
appreciable degree from the voice, expression, manner, and dress of
five hundred thousand other single ladies of her age and position in
the world.
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