“Billie, Billie, why have you deceived me so?” she exclaimed. “How could you have done this terrible thing? Oh, my dear, my dear, I have been so unhappy, and Mrs. Price, too. We have wept together.”
“What in the world?” cried Billie.
“The jewels, my dear. The box of wonderful jewels that you have kept. How could you have done such a thing? I know many young girls who would have been tempted by them. But not you, my dear, dear Billie. And Mary, too. Oh, heavens, I am so unhappy!”
Miss Campbell was so shaken by her sobs and weeping that Billie was obliged to wipe her eyes with her own handkerchief.
“But, dearest Cousin,” she said at last. “We haven’t done anything dishonest, or that we might be ashamed of. How did you find out about the box and who told you such a slander about us?”
After being bolstered up with aromatic nerve drops and eau de cologne, Miss Campbell was able to speak coherently.
“Yesterday a man came here to see me. He sent up his name and the message that he wished to speak to me about something in regard to you, so I had him shown in. And then, my child, he told me such a story. How his motor car had been wrecked on the very day we went to Shell Island and a box of jewels belonging to his wife had fallen in the sand. He had good reason to know, he said, that you had found the jewels and, instead of trying to find the owner or answering advertisements and notes, had kept them all this time in Mrs. Price’s safe. He gave me a list of the jewels and an exact description. I went at once to Mrs. Price. We found the combination, opened the safe, and got out the box. There they were, just as he had described them. Oh, my dear, what mortification! What will your father say?”
“Did you give him the jewels?” exclaimed Billie, without waiting to make explanations until this important point was settled.
“The man was very insistent. He has threatened to arrest you and Mary and even Mrs. Price. Think of that! For harboring stolen goods.”
“Did you give them to him?” cried Billie, impatiently.