I am sending this by special delivery, as I want you to get it without fail [heavily underscored]. Perkins tells me he had to go out and gave your violets to Annie, the chamber maid. Annie says she placed the box in the dressing-room as it was cooler there and she thought the flowers would keep better. She knows nothing more of the matter, did not tell me of the flowers because she thought they would be found by me or Marjorie Langdon....
A bad blot finished the sentence, and explained why the sheet had been discarded.
Marjorie sat stunned, too confused, at first to puzzle out the significance of the unfinished note, which was in Janet’s unmistakable handwriting. Then she rose, stumbled over to the broad sofa, and curling up in one corner, pillowed her head on her arms, and gave herself up to elucidating the enigma;—but the more she thought the more nonplussed she became.
Janet’s note indicated that Tom Nichols had sent her violets which apparently she had never received; she hinted that Marjorie might have found them—but the only violets which she, Marjorie had received had come from Janet’s brother, Duncan, the afternoon of the British Embassy dinner. Touched by the attention, and stirred by a deeper emotion than she had ever felt before, she had carefully preserved Duncan’s withered bouquet in her closet. Astounded by the discovery of the emerald and diamond bracelet in her flower box; utterly unable to explain how it got there, she had, in her desire to protect Janet and silence any investigation which the loss of the bracelet might start, returned it anonymously to Representative J. Calhoun-Cooper. In the light of Janet’s note, had she inadvertently, not looking at the contents of Small’s box, put away in her closet Janet’s violets, and the maid, finding only Duncan’s withered bouquet in the dressing-room, thrown it away? It seemed the only explanation. But Representative J. Calhoun-Cooper’s remarks in the lift at the ball indicated that he was aware the bracelet had come from her, Marjorie, and that Tom knew of its loss. Could it be that Tom had discovered that Janet was a kleptomaniac?
The mere idea brought Marjorie up all standing; only to sink back again with a groan, appalled at the possibility. Honest Tom, with his high standards of rectitude, in love with a girl whose perception of the laws governing meum and tuum was so blunted, spelled tragedy. Marjorie dismissed the thought with a shudder, and her mind reverted to another puzzling phase of the situation: Calhoun-Cooper, by speech, and Tom, by look, had implied she was responsible for the loss and return of the bracelet. Who had....
“For once I’ve caught you napping!” teased a voice, and Marjorie jerked herself erect, to find Chichester Barnard standing looking down at her.
The laughter in his eyes gave way to concern at sight of her face. “My darling, what is it?” he questioned, alarmed.
“Nothing”—then seeing his disbelief, she added, “Nothing that would interest you....”
“But everything that concerns you, interests me,” he protested. “What is troubling you?”
“A matter of no moment,” speaking more briskly. “What brought you here this morning?”