Sir Jasper made no response. He had covered his eyes with a shaking hand; but after a brief silence he looked at Lulu again, and saw that her tear-stained, freckled face wore the stamp of truth. So Celia had kept deliberate silence, and allowed him to misjudge her sister and treat her most unfairly, he reflected wrathfully. She had wilfully deceived him.
"What is the real object of your visit, child?" he asked, presently.
"I came to ask you not to be too hard on poor Celia, and—"
"Poor Celia, indeed!" he interposed, bitterly. "What consideration has she shown for her sister? She allowed me to treat Joy as—as I am ashamed to remember I treated her, now! She knew the mistake I had made! Tell me," he cried, a sudden suspicion crossing his mind— "you appear to be in her confidence—tell me, was it Celia and not Joy who meddled with the butterfly brooch—"
"The butterfly brooch!" Lulu echoed, growing crimson, and beginning to stutter. "I— I thought, that is, I—she told me she had put it back!"
"Put it back!" he almost screamed in his excitement. "Yes, she did! But—"
He paused as the door opened, and Mrs. Wallis, followed by Celia herself, entered the room. Lulu, frightened at the admission she had made, burst into a flood of tears and covered her face with her hands, utterly overcome with alarm at the situation in which she had placed herself. Sir Jasper struggled for composure, and with his stern glance upon Celia, pointed to the weeping girl.
"She came to plead for you," he said, sarcastically, "but I should like to hear what you have to say for yourself."
"Nothing," Celia answered, her scared face drawn with an emotion which almost amounted to terror, "nothing, except to confess how wicked I've been. Uncle Jasper, I've been a worse girl than you can possibly imagine. I let you think it was Joy who had been reading 'Lady Isabella's Treachery,' when it was I who had borrowed the book from Lulu; and she—Joy—was so generous, she would not betray me to you. I've been selfish, and deceptive; and—oh, much worse than that! I've told mother all, and I want to tell you. I—I stole the butterfly brooch—that is, I did not mean to steal it, only to borrow it for the time—but it was stealing it really. Lulu knows how I wore it at the flower show, and at the concert, and how I lost it, and the misery and despair I was in. Then, when I had it again, I never rested it I had put it back."
"But how did you manage to put it back?" Sir Jasper inquired, in bewilderment.