Dig a hole and bury it, came a prompting voice within him; and Cyril waited for no better suggestion, but crept with it down the stairs, and out to the garden.
Seizing a spade, he dug a hole rapidly in an unfrequented place; and when it was large enough thrust the stuff in. Then he covered it over again, to leave the spot apparently as he found it.
"I wish those stars would give a stronger light," grumbled Cyril, looking up at the dark blue canopy. "I must come again in the morning, I suppose, and see that it's all safe. It wouldn't do to bring a lantern."
Now it happened that Mr. Herbert Dare was bound on a private errand that evening. His intention was to go abroad in his cloak while he executed it. Just about the time that Cyril was putting the finishing touch to the hole, Herbert went up to his room to get the cloak.
To get the cloak, indeed! When Herbert opened the closet-door, nothing except the mutilated object just described met his eye. A torn, cut thing, the threads hanging from it loosely. Nothing could exceed Herbert's consternation as he stared at it. He thought he must be in a dream. Was it his cloak? Just before dinner, when he came up to wash his hands, he had seen his cloak hanging there, perfect. He shook it, he pulled it, he peered at it. His cloak it certainly was; but who had destroyed it? A suspicion flashed into his mind that it might be the governess. He made but a few steps to the school-room, carrying the cloak with him.
The governess was sitting there, listlessly enough. Perhaps she was waiting for him. "I say, mademoiselle," he began, "what on earth have you been doing to my cloak?"
"To your cloak!" responded she. "What should I have been doing to it?"
"Look here," he said, spreading it out before her. "Who or what has done this? It was all right when I went down to dinner."
She stared at it in astonishment great as Herbert's, and threw off a volley of surprise in her foreign tongue. But she was a shrewd woman. Ay, never was there a shrewder than Bianca Varsini. Mr. Sergeant Delves was not a bad hand at ferreting out conclusions; but she would have beaten the sergeant hollow.
"Tenez," cried she, putting up her forefinger in thought, as she gazed at the cloak. "Cyril did this."