"Come!" she whispered. "Thomasine, the— My dear sister, be prepared! a cruel blow!"
"What do you mean, Melissa?" cried Miss Thomasine, her nerves quite unstrung by the performance in which she had so recently taken part, and also by her late altercation, if so it could be called, with her niece.
"Come!" repeated Miss Melissa, and her sister went into the drawing-room, almost expecting to find that there had been a death in the family.
Theodora ran up stairs. "They have found it out! they have found it out!" she thought, and flying to her room she closed and bolted the door. Ten minutes later her name was called from without.
"Miss Theodora, are you there?" It was Mary Ann, one of the maids. Teddy did not speak nor move.
"Miss Theodora," said Mary Ann again, tapping at the door and rattling the handle as she spoke. "I think, miss, you had better let me in. Your aunts want to speak to you."
Slowly Teddy rose from the bed, where she had flung herself, and reluctantly opened the door. Her dark hair, which was cut short across her forehead and hung in a wavy mass behind, looked sadly dishevelled, and her face showed unmistakably that she had been crying. "What do they want me for?" she asked.
"A terrible thing has happened, miss," replied Mary Ann, in an awed whisper; "the Middleton bowl is broke—the Middleton bowl as was worth hundreds of dollars, I've heard tell, that folks has been comin' from all over the country to see ever since I've lived here, and that's goin' on fifteen years."
"But why do they want me?" asked Theodora, showing no surprise when told of the calamity, as Mary Ann noted.
"Because, miss, somebody has broke it, and as it ain't one of the ladies themselves, it must have been either you or some of the help. So, miss, if 'twas you and you don't tell it, some of us has got to suffer."