His calm assurance, and his words, struck them with consternation. You see, he and they were at cross-purposes.
"Dobbs said he'd take care I should be put to no inconvenience—and this comes of it! That's trusting your friends. He vowed to me, this very week, that he had provided for the bill."
"He thinks it is only an affair of debt!" screamed Frances Chenevix. "Oh, Gerard what a relief! We thought you were confessing."
"You are not arrested for debt, sir," explained the officer. "You are apprehended for—in short, it is a case of felony."
"Felony!" echoed Gerard Hope. "Oh, indeed! Could you not make it murder?" he added, with sarcasm.
"Off with him to Marlborough Street, officer," cried the exasperated colonel; "I'll come with you, and prefer the charge. He scoffs at it, does he?"
"Yes, that I do," answered Gerard. "Whatever pitfalls I may have walked into in the way of debt and carelessness, I have not gone in for felony."
"You are accused, sir," said the officer, "of stealing a diamond bracelet."
"Hey!" uttered Gerard, a flash of intelligence rising to his face, as he glanced at Alice. "I might have guessed it was the bracelet affair, if I had had my recollection about me."
"Oh, oh," triumphed the colonel, in mocking jocularity. "So you expected it was the bracelet, did you? We shall have it all out presently."