“No, I will,” agreed Elsie. “She’ll be sure it was Mrs. Grant’s ghost again.... And I’ll help her fix up the bedroom.”
Mary Louise nodded. “You’ll come, Jane?” she inquired.
“I’m leaving—for good!” announced her chum. “I wouldn’t spend another night at Dark Cedars for all the necklaces in the world!”
Mary Louise said nothing: there was no use arguing with Jane. As she went out of the door with Silky at her heels she called to Hannah that she alone would be back to dinner.
“About two o’clock,” returned the woman. “And ain’t Miss Jane comin’?”
“No, Hannah,” answered the girl for herself. “I shan’t see you again. Good-bye.”
The girls were some distance beyond the hedge of Dark Cedars when Mary Louise asked her companion her reason for leaving. “Because,” she added, “now that everything valuable has been stolen, I don’t see what you have to fear.”
Jane hesitated a moment.
“I hate to say it, Mary Lou, but I feel I must tell you—for your own protection. It’s Elsie I’m afraid of. I really believe she is guilty. I think she has those gold pieces hidden somewhere at Dark Cedars—and now the necklace. I think she’s a sneak, and I believe she’s planning a getaway. But if one of us should discover her theft, I’m afraid she’d do something desperate to us.”
An expression of pain passed over Mary Louise’s face. “Go on, and tell me why you suspect her,” she said.