“When did you discover its loss?”
If possible, Maida went still whiter, and her nostrils took on a pinched look.
“Shortly after I had returned from the porch,” she said steadily enough, but her eyes went to the back of the room for a brief instant.
“How did this get into Dr. Letheny’s possession?” persisted the coroner.
“I do not know. I suppose I—dropped it. Lost it from my cuff, and Dr. Letheny must have—found it.”
“In the dark?” inquired the coroner suavely.
Maida flushed again but her chin went higher.
“I do not know.”
He continued to question her at some length but with no success, and finally he dismissed her, with a grudging “Thank you.”
Corole Letheny was the next witness and I settled myself more comfortably in my chair to listen. She was extremely self-possessed, and sat down as gracefully as if she had been paying a call. She looked rather nice, or would have, but for the clear beauty of the face that had just preceded her. Maida’s immaculate uniform, her clear white skin, her amazing blue eyes under their straight black eyebrows, that little, aristocratic air which somehow always surrounded her, made Corole seem a little tarnished, a little tawdry, a little theatrical, in spite of her perfect grooming and her expensive clothing.