CHAPTER XII
"What are you doing there, Clemence?" asked her friend; "not destroying that pretty article, I hope."
"Yes and no," was the reply. "Upon examination, I find that it has become quite soiled, and thought I would make another frame to put these same flowers into."
"Now, that is really too bad, making you so much extra trouble when you are feeling so ill. I noticed, though, that it had lost its freshness and purity—looking, in fact, as if some careless servant had swept on it."
"I presume that is the case," said Clemence; "any way, it is completely ruined now."
"What can this mean?" she exclaimed, a moment after, holding up a lady's gold pin. "Is it not somewhat remarkable to find an article of this description here?"
"No," said Ulrica Hardyng, coming forward, with an expression of contempt upon her fine features. "I can't say as I consider it so. I can understand precisely the motive that induced that woman to plot this piece of mischief. She meant to ruin you, Clemence, in the estimation of the whole community; in short, to brand you as dishonest. If you had effected a sale of the article, without examining it closely, you would never have detected the proximity of this valuable ornament, and when it was called for, which would surely have occurred, you could not, as a matter of course, have produced it. Do you not see the whole trap at a glance?"
"What have I not escaped?" ejaculated Clemence, pale with agitation. "What motive could possibly have led a comparative stranger to act thus?"
"There are numberless reasons," replied her friend. "The woman had placed herself, to a certain extent, in your power, by her uncalled for revelations of their domestic affairs, and she wished to have something to hold as a rod over you."
"Don't you think it might have been an accident?" willing, as usual, to believe every one but herself in the right.