An elderly lady shuffled her way along the front. As she approached this secluded spot, after looking round warily, she took her place at one end of the seat. The old gentleman raised his hat courteously and said: “Well! where are they? Have you got them?”
In a beautiful voice, but in tremulous tones, the old lady said: “No, I have not got them.”
With a half-suppressed howl, he said: “What! you have not got them? You lie! You are deceiving me.”
Still tremulously, but quite restrained, she replied:
“No! I have not got them, and I am not deceiving you. Let me tell you what happened.”
In spite of the blue glasses the old man’s face assumed a contorted expression of anger that was hateful to behold. Grasping her arm with a vicious grip, he almost shrieked: “Again I tell you, you lie! Where are they? You dare not tell me you have bungled after all the care I took.”
“Hush!” she whispered. “You will be heard. Yes! I bungled.”
Then this innocent-looking old lady told the events of the previous night at Aldborough Park, for it was Gilda Tempest disguised with consummate craft. The old man writhed and fumed, as each incident of that eventful night was narrated to him in the soft and musical tones of this young criminal of the beauteous countenance. The crime of a burglar is at all times contemptible. This story of an attempted burglary was peculiarly repellent, coming from the lips of a young girl who was so dearly loved by the “intended victim.” To have stolen any property belonging to Raife Remington would have been discreditable, but to attempt, with all the skilled burglar’s art, to steal those valuable jewels of the baroness, which had been entrusted to Raife for safe keeping—that was to place him in the most invidious position. It sounded hateful in the hearing. Yet this old reprobate of the deepest dye was the cause of this young girl’s downfall, and he was furious at her failure.
With a resumption of his usual self-control he hissed: “Those jewels are worth thirty thousand pounds. You were clumsy to miss such a prize. Now listen to me. That young fool’s father killed your father.”
Gilda shuddered, and tears trickled down the cheeks which had been skilfully lined to disguise their youthful beauty.