“Flanders, carry this in carefully,” she said, her hands in a towel.  “Cheever, stop watching your wife and put the salad bowl on the table.  Everything ready, Harris?  All right.  Every one sit down.  I’ll be right in.”

She went into her bedroom, and divesting herself of her apron hung it in the closet.  Then going to her dressing table she drew the hatpin from the pincushion and carelessly slipped the rings on her fingers.  All at once she frowned and looked quickly at her hand.  Only two rings were there, the third ring, the one with the sapphire and the two diamonds, was missing.

“Stupid,” she said to herself, and returned to her dressing table.  All at once she stopped.  She remembered quite clearly putting the pin through the three rings.

She made no attempt to search further, but remained without moving, her fingers drumming slowly on the table, her head to one side, her lip drawn in a little between her teeth, listening with a frown to the babble from the outer room.  Who had taken the ring?  Each of her guests had had a dozen opportunities in the course of the time she had been busy in the kitchen.

“Too much time before the mirror, dear lady,” called out Flanders gaily, who from where he was seated could see her.

“It is not he,” she said quickly.  Then she reconsidered.  “Why not?  He is clever—­who knows?  Let me think.”

To gain time she walked back slowly into the kitchen, her head bowed, her thumb between her teeth.

“Who has taken it?”

She ran over the character of her guests and their situations as she knew them.  Strangely enough, at each her mind stopped upon some reason that might explain a sudden temptation.

“I shall find out nothing this way,” she said to herself after a moment’s deliberation; “that is not the important thing to me just now.  The important thing is to get the ring back.”

And slowly, deliberately, she began to walk back and forth, her clenched hand beating the deliberate rhythmic measure of her journey.

Five minutes later, as Harris, installed en maitre over the chafing dish, was giving directions, spoon in the air, Mrs. Kildair came into the room like a lengthening shadow.  Her entrance had been made with scarcely a perceptible sound, and yet each guest was aware of it at the same moment, with a little nervous start.

“Heavens, dear lady,” exclaimed Flanders, “you come in on us like a Greek tragedy!  What is it you have for us, a surprise?”

As he spoke she turned her swift glance on him, drawing her forehead together until the eyebrows ran in a straight line.

“I have something to say to you,” she said in a sharp, businesslike manner, watching the company with penetrating eagerness.

There was no mistaking the seriousness of her voice.  Mr. Harris extinguished the oil lamp, covering the chafing dish clumsily with a discordant, disagreeable sound.  Mrs. Cheever and Mrs. Enos Jackson swung about abruptly, Maude Lille rose a little from her seat, while the men imitated these movements of expectancy with a clumsy shuffling of the feet.