"This is different from anything that ever came into my experience," Ellen answered.
"I told you before I started, I thought I was in for an exciting job. It wasn't only that Mr. Sands is a sort of celebrity, and everyone has been talking of Mrs. Sands as a beauty. It was the man himself gave me a kind of thrilled feeling the minute I saw him. Mums, Roger Sands is the sort I could fall in love with, if I was the falling-in-love type. He's strong and silent. He isn't a bit a woman's man. I don't know how to describe him, exactly. He made me feel as if I longed to do something for him. I was mighty keen to see what Mrs. Sands would be like. I suppose to see what style of woman he'd worship enough to pick up from the gutter."
"Goodness me, child!" broke in Mrs. Blackburne, absorbed. "You don't mean that's where she came from? I never heard——"
"No—no! I oughtn't to have used that expression," Ellen confessed, "though they tell all sorts of stories about her origin. I daresay none of 'em are right, and not a soul knows the truth. People have given her a nickname: 'the girl from nowhere.' But you've only to see her to realize at once that whatever she was, she must have been brought up like a princess."
"Handsome?"
"A dream of beauty. She's worthy of her husband that way, but she's not in other ways. That's my excuse."
"Your excuse, lovey? For what?"
"For what I did. But you won't know why I did it, or forgive me for doing it, unless I tell you the story as I understand it."
"Go right on, dear, and take your time. I won't interrupt again." So Ellen gave her mother a succinct account of all that had befallen her, until the fateful moment when she discovered that the pearls were not in their case.
"The case empty! The pearls gone! My goodness me!" gasped the old lady.