“Certainly,” I said coldly.  That was the way it was all along.  Whenever there was something to do that no one else would undertake—­any unpleasant responsibility—­that entire mongrel household turned with one gesture and pointed its finger at me!  Well, it is over now, and I ought not to be bitter, considering everything.

It was quite characteristic of that memorable evening (that is quite novelesque, I think) that my interview with Jimmy should have a sensational ending.  He was terribly down, of course, and as I was trying to pass him to get to the door, he caught my hand.

“You’re a girl in a thousand, Kit,” he said forlornly.  “If I were not so damnably, hopelessly, idiotically in love with—­somebody else, I should be crazy about you.”

“Don’t be maudlin,” I retorted.  “Would you mind letting my hand go?” I felt sure Bella could hear.

“Oh, come now, Kit,” he implored, “we’ve always got along so well.  It’s a shame to let a thing like this make us bad friends.  Aren’t you ever going to forgive me?”

“Never,” I said promptly.  “When I once get away, I don’t want ever to see you again.  I was never so humiliated in my life.  I loathe you!”

Then I turned around, and, of course, there was Aunt Selina with her eyes protruding until you could have knocked them off with a stick, and beside her, very red and uncomfortable, Mr. Harbison!

“Bella!” she said in a shocked voice, “is that the way you speak to your husband!  It is high time I came here, I think, and took a hand in this affair.”

“Oh, never mind, Aunt Selina,” Jim said, with a sheepish grin.  “Kit—­Bella is tired and nervous.  This is a h—­deuce of a situation.  No—­er—­servants, and all that.”

But Aunt Selina did mind, and showed it.  She pulled the unlucky Harbison man through the door and closed it, and then stood glaring at both of us.

“Every little quarrel is an apple knocked from the tree of love,” she announced oratorically.

“This was a very little quarrel,” Jim said, edging toward the door; “a—­a green apple, Aunt Selina, a colicky little green apple.”  But she was not to be diverted.

“Bella,” she said severely, “you said you loathed him.  You didn’t mean that.”

“But I do!” I cried hysterically.  “There isn’t any word to tell how I—­how I detest him.”

Then I swept past them all and flew to Bella’s dressing room and locked myself in.  Aunt Selina knocked until she was tired, then gave up and went to bed.

That was the night Anne Brown’s pearl collar was stolen!

Chapter VI.  A MIGHTY POOR JOKE

Of course, one knows that there are people who in a different grade of society would be shoplifters and pickpockets.  When they are restrained by obligation or environment they become a little overkeen at bridge, or take the wrong sables, or stuff a gold-backed brush into a muff at a reception.  You remember the ivory dressing set that Theodora Bucknell had, fastened with fine gold chains?  And the sensation it caused at the Bucknell cotillion when Mrs. Van Zire went sweeping to her carriage with two feet of gold chain hanging from the front of her wrap?