"My new one of course," was the petulant reply, "the one I had to tease papa so long for. It's enough to vex a saint," she added, looking under a large chair. "I don't recollect missing it from my arm in the evening; and I was so tired when I went to bed, I can't remember whether I unclasped it then or not."
"Then it is certain there are thieves about!" shrieked Miss Saunders. "I'll send for a detective at once, and put him on the track. I sha'n't dare to look your father in the face. Why, that bracelet cost sixty dollars, the forks were three apiece, and the pudding-shovel fifteen! I paid for them with my own hands."
A man, plainly dressed in citizen's clothes, soon made his appearance and announced himself as a member of the detective police, to whom Aunt Clarissa gave in detail an account of the missing articles.
"I dare say there is a great deal more stolen," she said, casting her eyes searchingly around the room; "but we have discovered no other loss."
The officer smiled, and after receiving from aunt and niece rather a confused account of the dinner party, during which the spinster freely owned that she wished it had never taken place; and having taken the name and residence of each gentleman carefully down in his note-book, he said he "should like to examine the servants."
Half an hour later he left the house satisfied that the thief, if such there were, did not reside within its walls, promising to give the subject his immediate attention, and report to them at the earliest moment.
One week, two weeks passed, and Alice, in the excitement of present scenes, had almost forgotten her loss. But not so Aunt Clarissa; for several other articles of more or less value had disappeared as remarkably as the first.
Mr. Coleman now had become quite domesticated, as often as two or three times a week stopping to dine, so that nothing but the parting injunction of the detective—that they should say nothing of the theft—prevented the old lady from claiming sympathy from her guest.
One morning in the early part of April, the stranger we met at Mr. Saunders's table was busy in his counting room, when a man entered and asked for five minutes' conversation with him. To what this referred the reader must guess, as they talked with closed doors; but one thing is certain: when the officer emerged from the office, he looked as unlike the man who went in as can well be conceived. His eye flashed and his nostrils dilated in an alarming manner.
The same evening, Alice, having in vain plead with her aunt to allow her to have a ball, had assembled around her a few gay friends, and was in the midst of a merry frolic, when Mr. Saunders unexpectedly returned.