He scowled at that, but he let my hands go directly.

‘Have it your own way,’ he said.  ’But I tell you, you won’t marry him, and you’ll find he won’t want to marry you, and you’ll marry me, my girl.  And when you have married me, you shall cry your eyes out for every word you have said now.’

‘Oh, shall I, Mr. Liar?’ says I, for my blood was up; ’before that happens, you’ll have to change him into a liar and me into a fool and yourself into an honest man, and you’ll find that the hardest of all.’  And with that I threw the dusting-brush at him—­which was a piece of wicked temper I oughtn’t to have given way to—­and ran out of the door, and I heard him cursing to himself something fearful as I went down the passage.

‘Good thing the gentlefolks are abed still,’ I said to myself; and I didn’t tell a soul about it, even cook, the truth being I was ashamed to.

Well, everything went on pretty much the same as usual for two or three weeks, and I thought John was getting the better of his silliness, because he made a show of being friendly to James and was respectful to me, even when we was alone.  Then came that dreadful day that I shall never forget if I live to be a hundred years old.  Dinner was half an hour later than usual on account of Mr. Oliver having gone up to town on his business; but he didn’t get home when expected, and they sat down without him after all.  I was about my work, turning down beds and so forth, and I had done Mrs. Oliver’s about ten minutes, and was in my lady’s room, when Mrs. Oliver’s own maid came running in with a face like paper.

‘Oh, what ever shall I do?’ she cried, wringing her hands, as they say in books, and I always thought it nonsense, but she certainly did, though I never saw any one do it before or since.

‘What is it?’ I asked her.

‘It’s my mistress’s diamond necklace,’ she said.  ’She was going to wear it to-night.  And then she said, No, she wouldn’t; she’d have the emeralds, and I left it on the dressing-table instead of locking it up, and now it’s gone!’

I went into Mrs. Oliver’s room with her, and there was the jewel-box with the pretty shining things turned out on the dressing-table, for Mrs. Oliver had a heap of jewellery that had come to her from her own people, and she as fond of wearing it as if she was slim and twenty, instead of being fifty, and as round as an orange.  We looked on the dressing-table and we looked on the floor, and we looked in the curtains to see if it had got in any of them.  But look high, look low, no diamond necklace could we find.  So at last Scott—­that was Mrs. Oliver’s maid—­said there was nothing for it but to go and tell her mistress.  The ladies were in the drawing-room by this time.  So she went down all of a tremble, and in the hall there was Mrs. Oliver looking anxious out of the front door, which was open, it being summer and the house standing in its own park.

‘Mr. Oliver is very late, Scott,’ she says.  ’I am getting anxious about him.’