“And what was that? Tell me exactly what you did see,” said she imperiously.
And if she was disturbed she hid the fact very thoroughly indeed.
He hesitated, and then said steadily—
“I saw you—in a poor sort of dress, with a large, flopping black hat bent out of shape and with a feather out of curl that hung over it and shaded the eyes, standing alone—or you seemed to be alone, in the crowd. Then I saw you hand something that flashed—I think,” he added, bending forward to speak low and hurriedly, “it was diamonds or a diamond—to a man, who took it from you. And then you disappeared, and so did he, so completely that I did not see a trace of either of you again.”
Miss Davison listened with an unmoved face.
“And what,” she said, when he had finished, as she put her elbows on the table, still with her hands laced together, and looked at him with a sort of scornful challenge, “did you think of that?”
Once more he hesitated. Then he said—
“I did not know what to think, Miss Davison.”
She smiled with the same superb scorn.
“Did you,” she asked majestically, as she looked at him through her eyelashes with an air of ineffable contempt, “think I was a thief?”