“I didn’t,” I whispered. “I honestly didn’t.” But no one believed me.
“Have you any ideas about who made off with the violets?” asked aunt. “Who took the bracelet?”
I said I had. And she asked who it was, and I said I’d rather not tell. Then there was a deep, unpleasant silence, and during this everyone looked at me.
“We will have to have a very serious talk,” Aunt Penelope said to me. “I think, Natalie, you have allowed yourself to forget what you owe us, the debt our hospitality has laid on you.”
I contested, as politely as I knew how, that I had not. And I added that I had had nothing to do with the violet theft, whatever else I was mixed up in.
“Do you mean to tell me,” demanded Evelyn, waving the note we wrote, “that Amy had a thing to do with this? I can’t believe it. You didn’t, did you, Amy?”
And again Amy said “No.”
“It is too childish for her,” Evelyn continued triumphantly. “She plays as good a game of bridge as I do, mother, and she wouldn’t stoop to this sort of action. That we leave to people who accept everything and give nothing but trouble.”
“In some way,” I said, “I am going to pay you for everything”--and I could feel myself growing steadily more white, for I was furiously angry--“and I am going home,” I added, “home where truth is believed and I am trusted.” Then I looked at Amy.
“I will take some blame about the paste,” I said.