Nobody every understood why Bella consented to take Betty’s place with Aunt Selina.  As for me, I was too much engrossed with my own affairs to pay the invalid much attention.  Once or twice during the day I had stopped in to see her, and had been received frigidly and with marked disapproval.  I was in disgrace, of course, after the scene in the dining room the night before.  I had stood like a naughty child, just inside the door, and replied meekly when she said the pillows were overstuffed, and why didn’t I have the linen slips rinsed in starch water?  She laid the blame of her illness on me, as I have said before, and she made Jim read to her in the afternoon from a book she carried with her, Coals of Fire on the domestic Hearth, marking places for me to read.

She sent for me that night, just as I had taken off my gown; so I threw on a dressing gown and went in.  To my horror, Jim was already there.  At a gesture from Aunt Selina, he closed the door into the hall and tiptoed back beside the bed, where he sat staring at the figures on the silk comfort.

Aunt Selina’s first words were: 

“Where’s that flibberty-gibbet?”

Jim looked at me.

“She must mean Betty,” I explained.  “She has gone to bed, I think.”

“Don’t—­let—­her—­in—­this—­room—­again,” she said, with awful emphasis.  “She is an infamous creature.”

“Oh, come now, Aunt Selina,” Jim broke in; “she’s foolish, perhaps, but she’s a nice little thing.”

Aunt Selina’s face was a curious study.  Then she raised herself on her elbow, and, taking a flat chamois-skin bag from under her pillow, held it out.

“My cameo breastpin,” she said solemnly; “my cuff-buttons with gold rims and storks painted on china in the middle; my watch, that has put me to bed and got me up for forty years, and my money—­five hundred and ten dollars and forty cents!—­taken with the doors locked under my nose.”  Which was ambiguous, but forcible.

“But, good gracious, Miss Car—­Aunt Selina!” I exclaimed, “you don’t think Betty Mercer took those things?”

“No,” she said grimly; “I think I probably got up in my sleep and lighted the fire with them, or sent em out for a walk.”  Then she stuffed the bag away and sat up resolutely in bed.

“Have you made up?” she demanded, looking from one to the other of us.  “Bella, don’t tell me you still persist in that nonsense.”

“What nonsense?” I asked, getting ready to run.

“That you do not love him.”

“Him?”

“James,” she snapped irritably.  “Do you suppose I mean the policeman?”