“I am sure, Lucy, that Mrs. Todhetley may be trusted.”
“Very well. Both of you must be secret as the grave. It is for my sake, tell her, that I implore it. Perhaps she will keep the earring by her for a few months, saying nothing, so that this visit of ours into Worcestershire may be quite a thing of the past, and no suspicion, in consequence of it, as connected with the earring, may arise in my husband’s mind. After that, when months have elapsed, she must contrive to let it appear that the earring is then, in some plausible way or other, returned to her.”
“Rely upon it, we will take care. It will be managed very easily. But how did you get the earring, Lucy?”
“It has been in my possession ever since the night of the day you lost it; that Sunday afternoon, you know. I have carried it about with me everywhere.”
“Do you mean carried it upon you?”
“Yes; upon me.”
“I wonder you never lost it—a little thing like this!” I said, touching the soft packet that lay in my jacket pocket.
“I could not lose it,” she whispered. “It was sewn into my clothes.”
“But, Lucy, how did you manage to get it?”
She gave me the explanation in a few low, rapid words, glancing about her as she did it. Perhaps I had better repeat it in my own way; and to do that we must go back to the Sunday afternoon. At least, that will render it more intelligible and ship-shape. But I did not learn one-half of the details then; no, nor for a long time afterwards. And so, we go back again in imagination to the time of that January day, when we were honoured by the visit of “Detective Eccles,” and the snow was lying on the ground, and Farmer Coney’s fires were blazing hospitably.