"This is a case of 'sermons in stones,'" I replied, "and a very serious case. I wonder you have escaped with all those pretty brilliants on your sleeves."
"But I haven't escaped," she cried; "why, you're not up to date. Don't you know that I lost a marquise brooch at the Hayes's dance the other evening? I have never heard the last of it from my husband, who will not believe for a minute that I did not lose it in the crowd."
"And you yourself believe——"
"That it was stolen, of course. I pin my brooches too well to lose them—some one took it in the same cruel way that Lady Faber's rubies have been taken. Isn't it really awful to think that at every party we go to thieves go with us? It's enough to make one emigrate to the shires."
She fell to the flippant mood again, for nothing could keep her from that; and as there was obviously nothing to be learnt from her, I listened to her chatter sufferingly.
"But we were going to suspect people," she continued suddenly, "and we have not done it. As we can't begin with the curate, let's take the slim young man opposite. Hasn't he what Sheridan calls—but there, I mustn't say it; you know—a something disinheriting countenance?"
"He eats too many jam tarts and drinks too much lemonade to be a criminal," I replied; "besides, he is not occupied, you'll have to look in the ball-room."
"I can just see the top of the men's heads," said she, craning her neck forward in the effort. "Have you noticed that when a man is dancing, either he star-gazes in ecstasy, as though he were in heaven, or looks down to his boots—well, as if it were the other thing?"
"Possibly," said I; "but you're not going to constitute yourself a vehmgericht from seeing the top of people's heads."
"Indeed," she cried, "that shows how little you know; there is more character in the crown of an old man's head than is dreamt of in your philosophy, as what's-his-name says. Look at that shining roof bobbing up there, for instance; that is the halo of port and honesty—and a difficulty in dancing the polka. Oh! that mine enemy would dance the polka—especially if he were stout."