“O, Mr. Driscoll,” she began,—­and then he saw that a group of anxious girls hovered in her rear—­“my pendant! my beautiful pendant!  It is gone!  Somebody reached in from the balcony and took it from my dresser in the night.  Of course, it was to frighten me; all of the girls told me not to leave it there.  But I—­I cannot make them give it back, and papa is so particular about this jewel that I’m afraid to go home.  Won’t you tell them it’s no joke, and see that I get it again.  I won’t be so careless another time.”

Hardly believing his eyes, hardly believing his ears,—­she was so perfectly the spoiled child detected in a fault—­he looked sternly about upon the girls and bade them end the jest and produce the gems at once.

But not one of them spoke, and not one of them moved; only his daughter grew pale until the roses seemed a mockery, and the steady stare of her large eyes was almost too much for him to bear.

The anguish of this gave asperity to his manner, and in a strange, hoarse tone he loudly cried: 

“One of you did this.  Which?  If it was you, Alicia, speak.  I am in no mood for nonsense.  I want to know whose foot traversed the balcony and whose hand abstracted these jewels.”

A continued silence, deepening into painful embarrassment for all.  Mr. Driscoll eyed them in ill-concealed anguish, then turning to Miss Strange was still further thrown off his balance by seeing her pretty head droop and her gaze fall in confusion.

“Oh! it’s easy enough to tell whose foot traversed the balcony,” she murmured.  “It left this behind.”  And drawing forward her hand, she held out to view a small gold-coloured slipper.  “I found it outside my window,” she explained.  “I hoped I should not have to show it.”

A gasp of uncontrollable feeling from the surrounding group of girls, then absolute stillness.

“I fail to recognize it,” observed Mr. Driscoll, taking it in his hand.  “Whose slipper is this?” he asked in a manner not to be gainsaid.

Still no reply, then as he continued to eye the girls one after another a voice—­the last he expected to hear—­spoke and his daughter cried: 

“It is mine.  But it was not I who walked in it down the balcony.”

“Alicia!”

A month’s apprehension was in that cry.  The silence, the pent-up emotion brooding in the air was intolerable.  A fresh young laugh broke it.

“Oh,” exclaimed a roguish voice, “I knew that you were all in it!  But the especial one who wore the slipper and grabbed the pendant cannot hope to hide herself.  Her finger-tips will give her away.”

Amazement on every face and a convulsive movement in one half-hidden hand.