"Yes, dear," answered the sympathetic lady, "she has. Perhaps it's the best thing. She'll tell her mother all about it, and then we'll know the truth."
"Yes, she'll confess to her mother," said Fenn, and he grinned in satisfaction.
"Shut up, Fenn," said Mr. Forbes. "I'm not at all sure Dolly is the culprit. If I know that girl, she wouldn't run away if she were guilty,—but she might if she were unjustly accused."
"That's generous of you, sir," said the secretary, "but you know yourself that when I taxed Miss Fayre definitely with the deed, she immediately went off, pretending that she was just going for a ride, and would return. That piece of deception doesn't look like innocence, I think you must admit!"
"No, no, it doesn't. Dotty, did you say you had some other suspicion?
What is it?"
"I can't tell it now. I can't understand Dolly. I know, oh, I KNOW she never took the earring, but I can't understand her going off like that. She never pretends. She's never deceitful—"
"She surely was this time," and Fenn seemed to exult in the fact.
"Maybe she changed her plan after she started," suggested Dotty delorously.
"Not likely," mused Mr. Forbes. "It was unprecedented for her to go alone for a bus ride, but if it was because she wanted to get off home secretly, it is, of course, very plausible. She didn't want any of you girls to know she was going, lest you persuade her not to. She didn't want to go in my car alone, as that would seem strange. But to take a bus, that was really a clever way to escape unnoticed!"
"I'm surprised that she telephoned back at all," said Mr. Fenn.