"How suppose anything so utterly impossible?" What on earth had that to do with it, he wondered.
"Well, would one woman ask another woman to do such a thing without very strong reason?"
The man's brain swam; certainly she was not asking him to sell jewels for her. What could she be driving at?
"Dear lady, I hope you will forgive my saying that the common consent of mankind throughout the ages agrees that your sex never acts upon reason."
"I can't forgive anything so insulting to my sex. My impression is that the woman stole the necklace."
"Ah, now we leave the abstract and come to the concrete—a particular woman and a particular necklace—and forgetting logic, we go gallantly upon feelings, intuitions. Still, the impression that certain costly jewels have been stolen by an individual acquaintance is somewhat powerful, not to say aggressive. Modern altruism, still less old-fashioned Christian charity, would scarcely cherish an impression of that kind, would it?" After all, he reflected, this little woman is not as simple as she appears.
"Well, but if she wants to sell them, why can't she do it herself?"
"People exist who never, as a matter of principle, do anything they can get anybody else to do for them. I can't defend the principle, though I often act upon it; indeed, it appears to have its roots very deep in human nature, like the propensity to bottle up trumps at bridge."
"One dislikes to be disobliging; it seems unkind."
"If," replied the thin man, a light suddenly breaking upon his bewildered brain, "the lady in question should happen to be our dear young friend of the too frequent laugh, Mrs. Allonby, don't be afraid. She has neither the wit nor the self-command to make a big haul like that. But she is quite silly enough to get into difficulties over play or dress"—here Ermengarde's cheeks vied with the scarlet salvias blooming hard by—"and to sell jewels on the sly, and it would be the worst service you could do a child like that to help her."