"You haven't lost it by any chance?"
"No," she said. "I can't have lost it. If I had, I should have lost the little bag at the same time."
"But how do you explain it?" said the notary.
Dario intervened a trifle dryly:
"Mademoiselle has no need to explain. For you don't pretend...."
"Of course none of us supposes that mademoiselle has come here without having the right," said the notary. "In the place of four medals there are five, that's all I meant to say."
Dorothy said again in the most positive tones: "I have not lost it. From the moment it was missing——"
She was on the point of saying:
"From the moment it was missing from this purse it had been stolen from me."
She did not finish that sentence. Her heart was wrung by a sudden anguish, as she suddenly grasped the full meaning of such an accusation; and the problem presented itself to her in all its simplicity and with its only possible and exact solution: "The four pieces of gold are there. One of them has been stolen from me. Then one of these four men is a thief."