“I don’t tell anything else.” Indignantly. “And that’s the trouble.”
“And how well you stick to it!” Admiringly. “If you tell such ones before, how will it be after?”
“After what?” he demanded.
“The church ceremony,” she giggled.
“Don’t you worry about that. There isn’t going to be any.”
“It’s perfectly lovely of you to say there isn’t. It will be such fun to see you change your mind.” She spoke in that regular on-to-Washington tone. “I can just see you walking up the aisle. Won’t you look handsome? And poor, demure little me! I shan’t look like hardly anything.”
Bob pretended not to hear.
“You say they are keeping it very quiet about the robbery at the Ralston house. How, then, did you come to know?”
“Eavesdropping.” Shamelessly. “Thought it was necessary you should know the ‘lay of the land.’ But never mind the ‘how.’ It is sufficient that I managed to overhear Lord Stanfield say he was going to send for you. Gwendoline Gerald knows about the robbery and so does her aunt and Lord Stanfield, but it’s being kept from all the other guests for the present. Even Mrs. Vanderpool doesn’t know. She still thinks the brooch she is wearing is the real one, poor dear! Lord Stanfield discovered it wasn’t. He asked her one day to let him see it. Then, he just said: ‘Aw! How interesting!’—that is, to her. But to Mrs. Ralston he said it was an imitation and that some guest had substituted the false brooch for the real. Mrs. Vanderpool is not to know because Lord Stanfield says the thief must not dream he is suspected. He wants to give him full swing yet a while—‘enough rope to hang himself with,’ were the words he used. It seems Lord Stanfield anticipated things would be missing. He said he knew when a certain person—he didn’t say whom”—gazing up at Bob adoringly—“appeared on the scene, things just went. That’s why Lord Stanfield got asked to the Ralston house. Then when he said he was coming after you, I thought it would be such a joke if you weren’t there to receive him. And that’s why I came to elope with you. And isn’t it all too romantic for anything? I am sure none of those plays comes up to it. Maybe you’ll dramatize our little romance some day—that is—”
Miss Dolly suddenly stopped. “Isn’t that a car coming up behind?”