“Dear, don’t you think it is a little absurd—advertising?” asked the girl.
She seated herself at the other side of the desk and, reaching out her hand, opened a silver box and helped herself to one of her father’s cigarettes.
“Why absurd, darling?” asked Lord Flanborough testily; “lost property has been found before now, by means of advertising. I remember years ago when I was in the city, there was a fellow named Goldberg—”
“Please forget all about the city for a moment,” she smiled, lighting her cigarette, “and review all the circumstances. Firstly, I had the pearls when I was at Lady Machinstones’ house. I danced with quiet, respectable people—Sir Ralph Sapson, Sir George Felixburn, Lord Fethington, Major Aitkens, and that awfully nice boy of Machinstones. They didn’t steal them. I had the pearls when I left, because I saw them as I was fastening my fur cloak. I had them in the car because I touched them just before we reached the house. I don’t remember taking them off—but then I was dead tired and hardly remember going to bed. Obviously, Martin is the thief. She is the only person who has access to my room; she helped me undress; it is as plain as a pikestaff.”
Lord Flanborough tapped his large teeth with his penholder, a practice of his which annoyed his daughter beyond words, though at the moment she deemed it expedient to overlook the fault. The loss had frightened her, for the pearls were worth three thousand pounds and she was one of those people whose standard of values had a currency basis.
“I have asked Scotland Yard to send their very best man,” said Lord Flanborough importantly. “Where is Martin?”
“Locked in her room—I have told Fellows to sit outside her door,” said the girl, and then, interestedly, “When will the detective arrive?”
Lord Flanborough picked up an open telegraph form from the table.
“ ‘Sending Inspector Pretherston’—by Jove!”
He blinked across the desk at his daughter.
“Pretherston,” she repeated thoughtfully; “isn’t it strange?”
“Pretherston—hum,” said her father and looked at her again.
If he expected to see any confusion, any heightening of color, even so much as a faltering of glance, he was relieved, for she met his gaze steadfastly, save that there was a faraway look in her eyes and a certain speculative narrowing of lids.
The romance was five years old, and if she cherished the memory of it, it was the charity which she might show to a favored piece in her china cupboard; it was something to be taken out and dusted at intervals. Michael Pretherston was a bad match from every point of view, though his invalid cousin was a peer of the realm and Michael would one day be Pretherston of Pretherston. He was hideously poor, he was casual, he had no respect for wealth, he held the most outrageous views on the church, society and the state; he was, in fact, something as nearly approaching an anarchist as Lord Flanborough ever expected or feared to meet.
His wooing had been brief but tempestuous. The girl had been overwhelmed and had given her promise. Recovering her reason in the morning and realizing (as she said) that love was not “everything,” she had written him a letter of fourteen pages in which she had categorically set forth the essential conditions to their union. These called for the abandonment of all his principles, the reestablishment of all his shattered beliefs and an estimate of the cost of placing Pretherston Court in a state of repair suitable for the reception of the Lady Moya Pretherston (née Felton).
To her fourteen pages, he had returned a thirty-two page letter which was at once an affront and a justification for anarchy. It was not a love-letter; rather was it something between a pamphlet by Henry George and a treatise by Jean Jacques Rousseau, interspersed with passionate appeals to her womanhood and offensive references to her “huckster-souled” father.
“He was always a wild sort of chap,” said Lord Flanborough, shaking his head darkly. “I understood that he had gone abroad.”
“I suppose there are other Pretherstons,” said the girl; “still it is strange, isn’t it?”
“Do you ever feel … ?” began her father awkwardly.
She smiled and laid down her cigarette on the crystal ashtray.
“He was wholly impossible,” she agreed.
There came a gentle tap at the door and a girl entered.
She was dressed neatly in black, and her prettiness was of a different type to that of her employer (for Lady Moya indulged in the luxury of a secretary). It was a beautiful face with a hint of tragedy in the down-turned lips and, it seemed, a history of wild sorrow in her big grey eyes. Yet of sorrow she knew nothing, and such tragedy as she had met had left her unmoved. Her abundant hair was of a rich brown; the hand that clasped a notebook to her bosom was small and artistic. She was an inch taller than Lady Moya, but because she did not show the same erectness of carriage she seemed shorter.
“Father, you asked me to let you have Miss Tenby this morning,” said Lady Moya with a nod for the girl. “I don’t know whether you will still want her?”
“I am so sorry this dreadful thing has happened, Lord Flanborough,” said the girl in a low voice; “it must be terrible to feel that there is a thief in the house.”
Lord Flanborough smiled good-humoredly.
“We shall recover the pearls, I am certain,” he said; “don’t let it worry you, Miss Tenby—I hope you are comfortable?”
“Very, Lord Flanborough,” said the girl gratefully.
“And the work is not too hard, eh?”
The girl smiled slightly.
“It is nothing—I feel
