"Oh dear no! And, I suppose, it wasn't your fault if, finding I wasn't here, you unlocked the drawer!"
"I only wanted to see if it was the lost key I had found; I meant no harm."
Again Miss Arnott.
"Now, Evans, will you be silent! Well, Wilson, I don't see that, so far, you have been guilty of anything very reprehensible. It's quite possible that, somehow, the key may have slipped into the hem of your skirt; such accidents have been known. When you had tried the key and found that it was the one which had been mislaid; when you had opened the drawer with it, what did you do then?"
Again the lady's-maid was not to be denied. Orders or no orders, she refused to be silent.
"Yes, what did she do? I'll tell you what she did; don't you listen to anything she says, miss. She took liberties with everything that was inside that drawer, just as if the things was her own. She turned all the things out that was in it; you can see for yourself that it's empty! and she's got some of them now. Though I've asked her for them she won't give them up; yet she has the face to say she didn't mean to steal 'em!"
This time the housemaid was silent. Miss Arnott became conscious that not only had she been all the time holding herself very upright, but, also, that she was keeping her hands behind her back--in short, that her attitude more than suggested defiance.
"Wilson, is this true?"
The answer was wholly unlooked for.
"My mother is Jim Baker's cousin, miss."