“Seven hundred!” exclaimed Sue. “Has she any idea where she lost it?”
“She thinks it was when she was just starting for home. She remembers having the purse when she was still at the polo-field. She says you drove so rapidly——”
“I did,” admitted Sue, conscience-stricken. “Oh, I sha’n’t let her lose it, Mrs. Vander Laan. It was my fault. Why didn’t she deposit it in a bank that day she went into town?”
Mrs. Vander Laan was embroidering. Now she suddenly stopped and looked up at Sue. “But she hasn’t been to town,” she declared.
“Not to the dentist’s?” asked Sue, “—the day of the Fanshaw garden fête?”
“No, dear. She went driving with Mr. Valentine.”
“Oh.” Sue began to walk the floor again.
She was still walking when Genevieve and Phil came in. “Genevieve, I’m so sorry,” she cried, giving her hand to the other girl. “Tell me something to do.”
Genevieve met her sympathy ungraciously. “Oh, don’t bother,” she said with a little irritation. “I’d rather not have such a fuss made about it.” Then, to Mrs. Vander Laan: “May we have tea, mütterchen? Sue, take Mr. Rawson home with you and jolly him up with some tennis.”
But Phil did not look like a candidate for “jollying up.” He turned to Sue. “To think that Miss Unger carried the money all around New York that afternoon in a hand-bag that anybody might have grabbed,” he said, “and then lost it at the polo match.”