"Then Lady Sarah must have kept it out when she put in the rest. It was she who returned them to the case; I did not. Perhaps she wore it last night."
"No, miss, that she didn't. She wore only those two——"
"I saw what she had on," interrupted Alice. "But she might also have put on the other, without my noticing. Or she may have kept it out for some other purpose. I will ask her. Wait here an instant, Hughes; for of course you will like to be at a certainty."
"That's cool," thought Hughes, as Alice went into the breakfast-room, and the colonel came out of it, with his Times. "I should have said it was somebody else would like to be at a certainty, instead of me," continued the girl, indulging in soliloquy. "Thank goodness the box wasn't in my charge last night, if anything dreadful has come to pass. My lady don't keep out her bracelets for sport. Miss Seaton has left the key about, that's what she has done, and it's hard to say who hasn't been at it: I knew the box had been ransacked over."
"Lady Sarah," said Alice, "did you wear your new diamond bracelet last night?"
"No."
"Then did you put it into the box with the others?"
"No," repeated Lady Sarah, who was languidly toying with a basket of ferns.
"After you had chosen the bracelets you wished to wear, you put the others into the box yourself," explained Alice, thinking she was not understood. "Did you put in the new one, the diamond, or keep it out?"
"The new one was not there."