"You may go now, Mrs. Redmain," said her husband when Mary entered. "Get out, Mewks," he added; and both lady and valet disappeared.
"So!" he said, with a grin of pleasure. "Here's a pretty business! You may sit down, though. You haven't got the ring in that bag there?"
"Nor anywhere else, sir," answered Mary. "Shall I shake it out on the floor?—or on the sofa would be better."
"Nonsense! You don't imagine me such a fool as to suppose, if you had it, you would carry it about in your bag!"
"You don't believe I have it, sir—do you?" she returned, in a tone of appeal.
"How am I to know what to believe? There is something dubious about you—you have yourself all but admitted that: how am I to know that robbery mayn't be your little dodge? All that rubbish you talked down at Lychford about honesty, and taking no wages, and loving your mistress, and all that rot, looks devilish like something off the square! That ring, now, the stone of it alone, is worth seven hundred pounds: one might let pretty good wages go for a chance like that!"
Mary looked him in the face, and made him no answer. He spied a danger: if he irritated her, he would get nothing out of her!
"My girl," he said, changing his tone, "I believe you know nothing about the ring; I was only teasing you."
Mary could not help a sigh of relief, and her eyes fell, for she felt them beginning to fill. She could not have believed that the judgment of such a man would ever be of consequence to her. But the unity of the race is a thing that can not be broken.
Now, although Mr. Redmain was by no means so sure of her innocence as he had pretended, he did at least wish and hope to find her innocent—from no regard for her, but because there was another he would be more glad to find concerned in the ugly affair.