The latter are now happily married, and have sealed their forgiveness by augmenting Mrs Wemysson’s fortune to its original amount. They have, however, taken the precaution to place only the interest at her disposal. Every Christmas brings me some wonderful presents from Mr and Mrs Wigan, who will have it that I saved them from lifelong misery by exposing Mr Jackson’s schemes ere it was too late.
Mr Jackson himself has by this time discovered that shady ways don’t pay. He has been struck off the rolls, and Lincoln’s Inn Fields knows him no more.
VII. Madame Duchesne’s Garden Party
“It cost more than two hundred pounds, Miss Bell. But that is not the worst of the matter. My aunt stipulated that I should always wear it as a perpetual reminder of her past kindness and her future good intentions, and if she misses it I shall lose favour with her altogether. To lose Miss Mainwaring’s favour means to lose the splendid fortune which is hers to bequeath, so you see how very serious the matter is for me. It is, indeed, little short of life and death, for poverty would kill me now. For God’s sake do your best for me.”
“But surely, if Miss Mainwaring knows that you could not possibly have foreseen your loss, she will not be unjust enough to disinherit you?”
“Indeed she will. She believes me to be vacillating and unreliable, because I broke off an engagement with a rich man to whom I had but given a reluctant acceptance, and united myself to the man of my choice. My husband was poor and therefore beyond the pale of forgiveness, and my own pardon is only based on the most unswerving obedience to all my aunt’s injunctions. The pendant came from India, and the stones in it are said to possess occult power – I wish they had the power to come back to their rightful owner.”
The speaker heaved a sigh of desperation as she spoke, and I glanced at her with considerable interest. She was tall, pale, dark-eyed, and handsome, but her appearance bore certain signs of that vacillation and carelessness of which her aunt accredited her with the possession.
The circumstances surrounding the loss of which she complained were peculiar. She had been spending the evening at the house of the German Ambassador, and was returning home in Miss Mainwaring’s carriage, when she became aware of the fact that she had lost the jewelled pendant which her aunt had given her as a token of reconciliation when she returned to her after being suddenly widowed.
A frantic search of the carriage bore no results, and Mrs Bevan hastily told the coachman to return to the embassy. But she prudently refrained from confiding the particulars of her loss to him, for she was not quite without hope that it might be remedied. Madame von Auerbach was, however, able to give her no comfort, for she had herself suffered in like manner with her guest.
She had lost a valuable diamond-studded watch, and when the most careful search failed to discover it, the conclusion arrived at was that some thief must have been present at the reception. It was an unpleasant conclusion to arrive at. But it was the only natural one. For the Ambassador’s wife had not left her guests, or gone beyond the reception rooms, from the time she entered them, wearing the watch, to the moment when, the last visitors having just gone, she thought of looking at her watch, and found that it had disappeared.