"Please give me that case at once," she said; "I am afraid, if you wave it about like that, you will drop it, and I value it very much. You had no right to come into my room and meddle with my things, and poke and pry in all my drawers."
"Meddle, and poke, and pry! How dare you use such words to me?" cried Hilary, all the more furiously because the objectionable words contained a sting of truth. "And your things, indeed! I suppose you will say next that this is your necklace and your miniature?"
"Certainly I will," said Margaret with spirit, and without seeing at first whither this admission would lead her. "That is a miniature of my mother; and if you will read the inscription you will see that she gave it to me."
"A fine story," said Hilary contemptuously; "only your name doesn't happen to be Margaret, nor does your surname begin with an 'A.' Ah! you forget that, I think, when you said that your mother gave it to you."
Truly, Margaret had forgotten that, and she met Hilary's triumphant gaze with an expression akin to dismay. She had got herself suddenly into an awkward corner. If she persisted in saying that the miniature and pearls were hers, Hilary would find out that she was passing under an assumed name; whereas, on the other hand, if she did not assert her ownership of them, she would lay herself open to the charge that she had stolen them. It was a perplexing situation, and she hardly knew whether to be relieved or not, when she found, as she speedily did, that Hilary had quite made up her mind that she was a thief.
"You are discovered, I tell you," said Hilary. "I know you belong to the gang of burglars that have been robbing people's houses here during the last six weeks. Come into the dressing-room, and you will see how useless it is to brazen matters out like this."
The fact that Margaret was totally unprepared to see her trunk, that she believed to be empty and pushed away beneath the bed, standing out in the middle of the room, half full of silver, had of course been anticipated by Hilary, who enjoyed her surprise to the full. But the anger that was mingled with Miss Carson's astonishment was, of course, a sham, and Hilary treated it with the contempt she was so convinced that it deserved.
"Did you put all those things in my trunk?" Margaret said indignantly. "What does it mean? Those are the things that were stolen from Colonel Baker's house. I recognise the description of the Indian tablecloth."
"Of course you do," said Hilary with a sneer, "seeing that you stole it to wrap the things in, thief and burglar that you are!"
"Do you really mean that you seriously believe I am a burglar?" Margaret said, and, to Hilary's intense disgust, who felt that this flippant conduct robbed her in some way of her triumph, she went off into a perfect peal of laughter.