It flashed through me then what a thing like this might do to a name. You know, Mag, every bit of recognition an actress steals from the world is so much capital. It isn't like the old graft when you had to begin new every time you took up a piece of work. And your name—the name the world knows—and its knowing it makes it worth having like everything—that name is the sum of every scheme you've planned, of every time you've got away with the goods, of every laugh you've lifted, of every bit of cleverness you've thought out and embodied, of everything that's in you, of everything you are.
But I didn't dare think long of this. I turned to him.
"Tell me about this charge," I said. "Where was the purse? Whose was it? And why haven't they missed it till after a week?"
"They missed it all right that night, but Mrs. Gates wanted it kept quiet till the servants had been shadowed and it was positively proved that they hadn't got away with it."
"And then she thought of me?"
"And then she thought of you."
"I wonder why?"
"Because you were the only person in that room except Mrs. Gates, the lady who lost the purse, Mrs. Ramsay, and—eh?" "N—nothing. Mrs. Ramsay, you said?"
"Yes."
"Not Mrs. Edward Ramsay, of Philadelphia?"