“I am sure she did not,” returned Pauline, but her voice and intonation were such that Stone turned quickly to look at her. She had gone pale, and her eyes looked frightened. “Oh, no,” she went on, hurriedly, “Aunt Lucy would never buy such a thing. She hated snakes.”
“I know that, but she must have gotten it somewhere. It is easier to think she put it round her throat herself than to think she let some one else do it.”
“Why do you say that?” and now Pauline looked angry. “It is incredible that she should have put that thing round her own neck! What could have induced her to do it?”
“There seems to be no theory to fit the facts,” said Stone, wearily, “so we must try to get some facts that may suggest a theory. You think, Miss Stuart, that you saw Miss Frayne leaving Miss Carrington’s room late that night?”
“I know I saw her with her hand on the door-knob,” returned Pauline steadily, and just then Anita herself burst into the room. “That is a falsehood!” she cried, and her big blue eyes flashed angrily; “how could you see me, when you were yourself in Miss Carrington’s room?”
This was what Stone had wanted, to get these two girls at variance; and he helped along by saying, “Were you, Miss Stuart?”
“Certainly not!” cried Pauline.
“You were!” Anita flung back. “Miss Carrington was talking to you! She said she wished her face was as beautiful as yours! To whom else could she have said that? Surely not to the Count! One doesn’t call a man beautiful. And we all know that Miss Carrington admired your looks and lamented her own lack of beauty.”
“All that applies equally well to yourself,” and Pauline gazed steadily at the blonde beauty of Anita. “Why wasn’t all that speech addressed to your own attractive face, and you repeat it to incriminate me?”
Here was an idea. Stone wondered if it could be that Anita was in the boudoir and to turn suspicion from herself tried to pretend she had heard Pauline in there.