“Only the pleasure of seeing it where it is. It’s a gift,” he said.
“Well,” said the girl, “that was very kind of you; but you’re quite sure you never gave Miss Torrance anything of this kind?”
“No. I think I told you so.”
The maid was not convinced. “But,” she said, looking at him sideways, “I thought you did. She has a little gold chain, very thin, and not like the things they make now—and just lately she is always wearing it.”
“I never saw it.”
The girl smiled significantly. “I guess that’s not astonishing. She wears it low down on her neck—and the curious thing is that it lay by and she never looked at it for ever so long.”
Clavering felt that the dollars the trinket had cost him had not been wasted; but though he concealed his disgust tolerably well, the maid noticed it. She had, however, vague ambitions, and a scarcely warranted conviction that, given a fair field, she could prove herself a match for her mistress.
“Then, if it wasn’t you, it must have been the other man,” she said.
“The other man?”
“Yes,” with a laugh. “The one I took the wallet with the dollars to.”