MRS. ALLISON received her long lost locket from the hand of the stranger and as she noticed the extreme beauty of the woman's face she bit her lip in the effort to remain silent. "A generous reward and no questions asked," the advertisement had read and so, in spite of her unbounded curiosity, she was obliged to abide by the words as printed.

      It was a beautiful locket, somewhat old-fashioned 'tis true, but the diamonds were almost priceless, and then it was Sherwood's first gift and contained a perfect miniature of his handsome features.

      She kissed it now, ecstatically, while the beautiful stranger watched her in a somewhat wistful manner. Suddenly it occurred to her that the reward remained unpaid. She turned to her writing desk with a hasty apology and quickly scribbled off a check for one thousand dollars.

      "Take this," she said, and then their fingers met with the crisp new check between them.

      Once more Mrs. Allison bit her lips, for the longing to learn the woman's name was becoming almost irresistible. She was so delicately beautiful, so daintily refined, it was impossible to think of her as a common thief, yet the locket had been missing now for over six months and there was not a doubt but that it had been basely stolen.

      But Mrs. Allison was a woman of honor. She had written the advertisement herself and she was not the person to break her word simply to gratify her curiosity.

      But was it curiosity altogether that prompted her to this sudden interest? She asked herself the question as she stood in the doorway bidding a pleasant "good day" to the woman who had restored the precious trinket. Then curiosity, or interest, or whatever it was, gave way suddenly to a feeling of amazement, for as the stranger passed through the wide stone gate, she turned abruptly and raising the check to her lips kissed it and then let it flutter from her fingers and fall unheeded on the stones, a considerable distance behind her. Mrs. Allison's involuntary cry did not make her turn her head. With a graceful, gliding movement, she disappeared around the corner of the grounds, and Mrs. Allison, regaining her composure after a moment's struggle, ran down and captured the discarded check, which, on account of this promise of silence, she had been obliged to draw to the order of "Bearer."

      That night she told her husband of the occurrence as they sat leisurely sipping their after-dinner coffee.

      "I wonder why she would not keep the check," she said for the third time, but her husband seemed lost in the deepest perplexity.

      "Are the stones all right?" he finally asked, in an absent-minded manner.

      Mrs. Allison drew the locket from her bosom and scanned it carefully.

      "All right, I am sure, dearest, but" — she began laughing and searching for the spring, "I forgot to see if she had taken out my darling's picture."

      An exclamation of surprise escaped her lips as the lid flew open and disclosed her husband's face.

      "See!" she cried, angrily. "She has taken my picture from its side of the locket and put her own in its place, the impudent creature!"

      Sherwood Allison sprang to his feet and almost snatched the trinket from her fingers.

      "Was that the woman that restored the locket?" he asked her, sharply.

      Before his wife could do more than nod her head, he had rushed from the room and the words, "No questions asked," seemed ringing in her ears with a mocking clearness.

      An hour later Sherwood Allison was standing before a beautiful woman in the unromantic precincts of a hotel parlor.

      "I thought you were dead or I would never have married her," he was saying bitterly, but the woman turned from him with a despairing gesture.

      "You hoped I was dead, no doubt," she said sadly, then she turned her face away from him and a woman's heroism shone in her eyes as she continued. "I found the locket and went there to-day intending to tell her all your infamy — to tell her she was not your wife — but she was so young, so pure."

      There was a smothered groan as Sherwood Allison fled from her presence, and the woman, after a moment's thought, turned silently and left the apartment.

      The next morning Sherwood Allison's body was found at the Club with a bullet hole squarely through his heart. Mrs. Allison's sorrow very nearly destroyed her reason at first, but when, two days later, she raised her eyes to the pale, beautiful face that was bending beside her own, over her husband's casket, she felt a little surprised, but her quivering lips seemed involuntary to frame the words, "No questions asked," — and this, perhaps, was all that saved her.