“You don’t suspect—Pillar?” she said softly. She was anxious to find out the way the joke was going—she thought it had got lost.
Marcus paused—it was a serious thing to say, even in fun—“I have reason to doubt him,” he admitted.
Then up spake Diana: her eyes shining, her cheeks ablaze. She recounted—Marcus couldn’t have done it better himself—in fact she had got it all from him—the many and varied perfections of Pillar. His most excellent qualities—she had them all at her finger’s ends. As she talked Marcus’s heart warmed afresh towards the man he would as soon have suspected as himself of stealing—but Diana? Was she going to allow him to send for the policeman? Would she carry her joke to that extremity? He knew the note would go no further than Pillar: but she did not know that.
“Unless you can throw some light on the matter, this letter must go.” And he wrote the letter, pausing between the words, blackening the down strokes, rounding the e’s; still Diana said nothing, and Uncle Marcus gave his letter to Pillar to send at once. Whereupon Diana burst into tears and left the room.
Outside the door there were no tears to be wiped away, but there was much to be done. She had to find a policeman; not so difficult that as it sounded. It only meant going so far as the next lodge and borrowing the first young man she could find; and off she went, having told a housemaid to lock her bedroom door on the outside, and take the key away.
“Then if Uncle Marcus comes to comfort me,” she thought, “he will find the door locked.”
Uncle Marcus sat and waited. He made up his mind to wait five minutes. He could not let any woman cry for longer. They were fearfully long minutes. But they passed and he went upstairs. He knocked at the door. There was no answer, for by that time Diana was halfway to the next lodge.
“Diana?” Still no answer.
He waited. He heard her sob—was sure of it—confound the joke—“Diana!” No answer.
By this time Diana was at the next lodge; and was in the very act of coaching a young man—only too ready to be coached in anything by Diana, whom he had worshipped from afar the whole of one morning; from the other side of the river, to be exact—and he was perfectly willing to be a policeman if it made her happy.