Rollie had expected her to be raging like a wild woman,—alternately hurling anathemas at the thief for having stolen her gems and heaping denunciations upon the police because they had not already captured the criminal and recovered the necklace.
Her apparent indifference to that subject only emphasized to Rollie what he had before observed,—that it was impossible ever to forecast the mind of this woman upon any subject, or under any circumstances. At the same time, the young man was extremely grateful for this abstraction, because it made what he had to do vastly easier.
"I suppose," he ventured huskily, "you are worried to death about your diamonds."
The sentence drew one lightning flash from her eyes, and that was all.
"To tell you the truth, I have hardly thought of them," she snapped.
Rollie sat with open mouth, totally unable to comprehend, staring until his stare annoyed her.
"I say I have hardly thought of them," she repeated, with an asperity entirely sufficient to recall the young man from his amazement at her manner to the real object of his visit.
"But wouldn't you like to get your diamonds back?" he asked perspiringly.
"Of course, silly!" the actress replied, not bothering to conceal the fact that she regarded Burbeck as a child, sometimes useful and sometimes a nuisance. Apparently, she had hailed his advent because her ill humor required a fresh butt, Julie's face having indicated clearly that she had been made to suffer to the breaking point.
But Rollie was in no position to insist upon niceties of speech or manner. He had a trouble compared to which all other troubles of which he had ever conceived were nothing at all. He was haunted by a terrible fear, and to escape its torture he plumped full in the face of it by blurting: