“You see,” the airy little being went on, in her light way, “I have some awfully funny tricks.  I am always being scolded for them, but somehow I don’t improve.  One is to keep my jewelry bright with a strange foreign paste an old Frenchwoman once gave me in Paris.  It’s of a vivid red, and stains the fingers dreadfully if you don’t take care.  Not even water will take it off, see mine.  I used that paste on my pendant last night just after you left me, and being awfully sleepy I didn’t stop to rub it off.  If your finger-tips are not red, you never touched the pendant, Miss Driscoll.  Oh, see!  They are as white as milk.

“But some one took the sapphires, and I owe that person a scolding, as well as myself.  Was it you, Miss Hughson?  You, Miss Yates? or—­” and here she paused before Miss West, “Oh, you have your gloves on!  You are the guilty one!” and her laugh rang out like a peal of bells, robbing her next sentence of even a suggestion of sarcasm.  “Oh, what a sly-boots!” she cried.  “How you have deceived me!  Whoever would have thought you to be the one to play the mischief!”

Who indeed!  Of all the five, she was the one who was considered absolutely immune from suspicion ever since the night Mrs. Barnum’s handkerchief had been taken, and she not in the box.  Eyes which had surveyed Miss Driscoll askance now rose in wonder toward hers, and failed to fall again because of the stoniness into which her delicately-carved features had settled.

“Miss West, I know you will be glad to remove your gloves; Miss Strange certainly has a right to know her special tormentor,” spoke up her host in as natural a voice as his great relief would allow.

But the cold, half-frozen woman remained without a movement.  She was not deceived by the banter of the moment.  She knew that to all of the others, if not to Peter Strange’s odd little daughter, it was the thief who was being spotted and brought thus hilariously to light.  And her eyes grew hard, and her lips grey, and she failed to unglove the hands upon which all glances were concentrated.

“You do not need to see my hands; I confess to taking the pendant.”

“Caroline!”

A heart overcome by shock had thrown up this cry.  Miss West eyed her bosom-friend disdainfully.

“Miss Strange has called it a jest,” she coldly commented.  “Why should you suggest anything of a graver character?”

Alicia brought thus to bay, and by one she had trusted most, stepped quickly forward, and quivering with vague doubts, aghast before unheard-of possibilities, she tremulously remarked: 

“We did not sleep together last night.  You had to come into my room to get my slippers.  Why did you do this?  What was in your mind, Caroline?”

A steady look, a low laugh choked with many emotions answered her.

“Do you want me to reply, Alicia?  Or shall we let it pass?”

“Answer!”

It was Mr. Driscoll who spoke.  Alicia had shrunk back, almost to where a little figure was cowering with wide eyes fixed in something like terror on the aroused father’s face.