Eve sat down as if stabbed on the chair in front of her dressing-table, and stared at Mr. Prohack.
"You've let her go!" cried she, with an outraged gasp, implying that she had always suspected that she was married to a nincompoop, but not to such a nincompoop. "Where's she gone to?"
"I don't know."
"What's her name? Who is she?"
"I don't know that either. I only know that she's engaged to be married, and that a certain sacristan is madly but I hope honourably in love with her, and that she's had nothing whatever to do with the disappearance of your necklace."
"I suppose she told you so herself!" said Eve, with an irony that might have shrivelled up a husband less philosophic.
"She did not. She didn't say a word about the necklace. But she did make a full confession. She's mixed up in the clock-striking business."
"The what business?"
"The striking of the church-clock. You know it's stopped striking since last night, under the wise dispensation of heaven."
As he made this perfectly simple announcement, Mr. Prohack observed a sudden change in his wife's countenance. Her brow puckered: a sad, protesting, worried look came into her eyes.