“Or that they may have slipped out on to the floor of your room?”
“I’ve hunted everywhere,” said Rhoda.
“Of course it is plain that the things have been stolen, and probably by means of your keys,” said he. “But I would rather think that the keys had been picked up and that the finder yielded to a sudden temptation than that a deliberate plot was hatched to rob me by hunting in your pockets while you were away. That would be abominable, odious, unpardonable.”
Sir Robert grew quite warm as he thought of such an act of treachery.
“I wonder if I did drop them,” said Rhoda doubtfully. “But I really don’t think it possible. I’m not so careless as all that,” she went on piteously. “When I look upon it as such a high honour to have the keys at all.”
She threw at Sir Robert a look so plaintive, so full of apology and despair that he could not help smiling, as he told her not to worry her head about it, but to be sure that everything would come right.
“If it is one of the young servants who has been tempted,” said he, “I will try to get at him or her through the housekeeper, or by some other means, and to persuade him or her into restitution. So dry your eyes and go and dress for dinner, and try to forget all about this little contretemps.”
With dumb gratitude in her eyes poor Rhoda stole upstairs again and shut herself once more in her room. She was heartbroken over the unhappy affair, and could not help considering herself to have failed in her duty as custodian.
As for the identity of the thief, she could not even make a reasonable guess. The household was a large one, there were members of it she had never even seen. As perhaps none of them knew that she had duplicate keys, except one or two of the upper servants who were wholly to be trusted, Rhoda began to ask herself whether Sir Robert’s suggestion might not be a good one, that she had dropped the keys on to the soft carpet of the corridor as she came out of the study, instead of slipping them into her pocket.
In the meantime she would make sure that her pocket was really sound, as she supposed.