"I know nothing of any papers, non, non!" the maid replied. "I take nothing. If madame wishes to suggest that I am a thief, I go. I leave to-night."
The girl paced up and down the room, her pale face held high. She was not used to being called a thief. If madame was not satisfied she would depart at once. The countess changed her tone.
"Now listen to me," she said more gently. "Just before dinner to-night I am in receipt of certain papers. Nobody knows that I possess them. For safe keeping I place them in that drawer and lock it up. Some time later you come to me with this story of the burglary. If jewels had been stolen, or money, I would have perhaps understood it, though your tale is so extraordinary that——"
"Not at all, madame," the maid cried hotly. "No more strange than the stories one reads every day in the newspapers. And there are no jewels missing."
"No, and that makes the affair all the more suspicious in my eyes. Nobody could have known about those papers, and yet the thief takes nothing else. A woman walks into the house as if it belonged to her, she goes direct to that drawer, and there you are! You say you saw the woman?"
The maid nodded sulkily; she did not look in the least guilty.
"I have already told madame so," she said. "I saw the woman twice to-night. The first time was when she was here, the second time at the residence of my Lord Merehaven. It was the lady in the satin dress who stood in the hall." The girl spoke in tones of perfect confidence. No ridicule on the part of the countess could shake her belief in the statement.
"But it is impossible," the latter said. "You are speaking of Miss Galloway. I saw Miss Galloway several times during the evening. If you are correct, she must have slipped away and changed her dress, committed the robbery, and be back here and changed her dress again—all in a quarter of an hour."