The merchant, however, fully explained his reasons for not acceding to the last suggestion, and resolved upon the search.
The three servants were called into the room which Mr. Green denominated his library, and, in the presence of his friend and his wife, they were catechised. They all stoutly denied the crime. They all shed tears, and sobbed, and demanded an investigation. They each resented the suspicion as cruel and unjust. A boy engaged as page and kitchen-assistant was defiant, and hinted vaguely that his father and mother would not stand it; that Mr. Green would hear about it; and that he would not stay in the house another moment after his boxes were searched—which they might be at once.
The search began with the boxes of the young male servant, and nothing was traced in them.
The trunks of the favoured young woman of superior beauty and accomplishments were next searched. In one of them was found one of these trinkets and a duplicate of the other.
Mr. Green’s rage knew no bounds. In vain the girl protested her innocence, and declared it was the wicked device of some wretch for her destruction, or horrid conspiracy by some dreadful enemy to blast her reputation and dishonour her poor parents, which planted the evidence against her.
The merchant told her that if she confessed her crime he might forgive her. She would not admit a crime that, she said, she had not committed.
Mrs. Green remonstrated with the girl about her obstinacy, and advised her that it would be better to confess an offence which was so fairly brought home to her, and against the evidence of which it was impossible for a single moment to contend. The girl threw herself upon her mistress’s sympathy, hoping that she at least could not think her guilty of the crime attributed to her, although appearances were so much against her.
At last, under the cross-fire from these accusers, the young woman, who still refused to confess, dropped into a chair, and, in tones of agony, implored God to witness that she had never taken a thing that did not belong to her from any human being.
Mr. Green said this was more than he could stand. Such frightful hypocrisy, such horrid cant, such blasphemy, was the grossest outrage upon Heaven he had ever beheld. He told the boy to fetch a policeman, which service the lad rendered with alacrity. The already-convicted thief was given into the custody of the officer, taken to the station-house, and locked up.
The next day at the police-court the evidence of these facts was laid before the magistrate. The pawnbroker who had taken in the pledge was not able to identify the prisoner as the female who had pawned the article; but said that she was about the height, age, and appearance of the prisoner, although he would not swear to her. It was pledged, he said, about the hour of twelve in the morning; and Mrs. Green being called upon to give evidence as to the movements of her servant, with a view of confirming or breaking down the pawnbroker’s suspicion—as the case might be—was obliged to say that Eliza had been out on an errand for her mistress between eleven and twelve o’clock on the day referred to.