"La!" cried Barbara, smiling enigmatically. "How unfortunate that the necklace has been returned and the thief arrested without your assistance!"
"Arrested!" her auditors exclaimed together, but in very different tones. Lord Beachcombe's vibrated with gratified hatred, Prue's trembled with dismay. The color dropped from her cheek, and but for Peggie's promptitude, her agitation would have betrayed her beyond concealment. She, however, had been hovering on the threshold trying to attract her cousin's attention, and now ran forward with great vivacity, and by a torrent of eager questions, drew attention to herself and gave Prue time to recover from her perturbation, though not before it had been observed with malicious inference by Lord Beachcombe.
"Why, truly, I scarcely expected to bring news to the fountain-head," Barbara ran on. "Yet 'tis a fact, my poor Prue, that your romance has a very commonplace finale. 'Tis no dashing exploit of a bold highwayman, after all, no hairbreadth escape from a robber's den, but merely the outcome of an intrigue between a chambermaid and a scrivener's clerk; and a fit of vulgar jealousy has pricked the bubble of your romance, my love!"
Greatly to the astonishment of both her visitors, Prue's face, instead of falling in dismay, became irradiated with the loveliest expression of joy. Her eyes, softly luminous, swam in a rapturous mist and dimples played in the damask that suddenly drove the pallor from her cheek. Such a transformation could hardly fail to astonish even those most accustomed to the swift variations of this creature of caprice.
"Tell us quickly, dear Barbara," she cried, with a little tremolo of excitement in her voice. "You know 'twas near midnight when the duchess brought me home, and I was so tired I slept until noon—all my visitors this morning have come to seek information—not to impart it. Do, pray, tell me what has happened."
"La! Prue, I thought you would be mortified to death at such a tame ending to your romantic adventure, and you seem delighted," replied Barbara, with pique. "One of the serving-wenches at Marlborough House, finding the royal tiring-room for a moment unguarded, took her sweetheart in, and not content with gazing, they must needs carry their audacity to the point of fingering Her Majesty's toilet-articles, and so came upon the necklace in its case, which so dazzled them, I presume, that they turned crazy, and hearing voices at one door, ran out of another and found themselves back in the servants' quarters with the necklace in their possession. The girl swears they did not mean to steal it, but did not know how to get it back unobserved, and finally the lover, in a panic, fled from the house, carrying the perilous pelf with him."
"A probable story, indeed!" cried Beachcombe scoffingly. "It might account for the disappearance of the jewel, but scarcely for its restoration."
"Oh! that was a case of conscience, a thing quite incomprehensible of course to an 'esprit fort,' such as your lordship," retorted Barbara. "The girl suffered tortures, it appears, during which she was a dozen times on the point of confessing, but hesitated for fear of incriminating her lover. Then came the story of the return of the necklace, which, by the time it reached the still-room, had grown to the wildest of marvels. After that, no one seems to know exactly what happened, but possibly, between fear of her own part in the affair and rage at the treachery of her lover, the wretched creature lost what few senses she had and actually forced her way into the presence of the duchess, where she groveled on the floor, confessing and accusing and Lord knows what besides, and was carried out raving and foaming at the mouth."
"And so she confessed that she and her lover had stolen, or at any rate carried off the necklace," commented Prue thoughtfully.
"Then how do you account for its restoration by Robin Freemantle?" Beachcombe inquired, with his stealthy eyes upon her.