GERELDA COULD HAVE SAVED HER.
Hastily opening the door, Gerelda saw one of the maids.
"My mistress wishes to see you in the morning-room," she said. "I have
brought you some breakfast. You are to partake of this first; but my
mistress hopes you will not be long."
Gerelda swallowed a roll and drank the tea and hastened to the
morning-room. Here Gerelda found not only Mrs. Varrick, but every man
and woman who lived beneath the roof of the Varrick mansion.
For a moment Gerelda hesitated.
Had some one discovered that she was in disguise, and informed Mrs.
Varrick? She trembled violently from head to foot.
Mrs. Varrick broke in upon her confused thoughts.
"Pardon my somewhat abrupt summons, Miss Duncan," she said, motioning
her to a chair, "but something has occurred which renders it imperative
that I should speak collectively to every member of this household.
"Most of you remember, no doubt, that I wore my diamond bracelet to the
opera last night. When I returned home I unclasped it from my arm,
myself, and laid it carefully away in my jewel-box. This morning it is
missing. My maid and I made a careful examination of the room where I am
in the habit of keeping my jewels. We found that the room had not been
entered from the outside, that all the windows and doors were securely
bolted on the inside. I am therefore forced to accept the theory that my
room was visited by some one from the inside of the house."
"Wasn't it amazing!" cried Jessie, turning to Miss Duncan. "A thief
walking through the house in the dead of night, while we were all
sleeping! I am sure I should have been frightened into hysterics had I
known it."
A cold, calm look from Mrs. Varrick's steel-gray eyes seemed to arrest
the words on the girl's lips, and that strange, uncanny gaze sent a
thrill creeping down to the very depths of Jessie Bain's soul.
All in a flash, as Miss Duncan listened, she realized what was coming.
"Let no one interrupt me unless I invite them to speak," said Mrs.
Varrick, continuing: "I will go on to say that the butler informs me
that he found no door or window open in any part of the house, when he
opened up the place this morning.
"Have you missed anything, Miss Duncan?"
"No," said Gerelda, quietly.
"And you, Miss Bain?"
"No. I have nothing that any thief would care to take," returned the
girl; "only this gold chain and this battered old locket which contains
my dead mother's picture, and I always wear this about my neck day and
night."
Mrs. Varrick asked the same question of every one present--"if they had
lost anything during the night"--and each one answered in a positive
negative.
"Then it seems that the thief was content with taking my diamond
bracelet," she said, sharply.
Suddenly the housekeeper, who had been in Mrs. Varrick's service since
she had come there a bride, spoke out:
"I am sure nobody would object, ma'am, if the trunks and boxes of every
one in the house were to be examined."
Mrs. Varrick turned to the housekeeper.
"I should not like to say that I suspect any one," she answered. "I have
sent for one of the most experienced detectives in the city, and am
expecting him to arrive at any moment. In the meantime, I desire that
you will all remain in this room."
Miss Duncan had maintained throughout an attitude of polite
indifference. Now she realized what that visit to Jessie Bain's room, in
the dead of the night, meant.
Then there commenced the greatest battle between Good and Evil that ever
was fought in a human heart. Should she save her rival, the girl whom
Hubert Varrick loved, or by her silence doom her to life-long misery?
While she was battling, Jessie smiled, murmuring in a low voice: "Isn't
it too bad, Miss Duncan, that Hubert--Mr. Varrick, I mean--should be
away from home just at this critical time?"
Miss Duncan's face hardened, and all the kindliness in her nature
suddenly died out.
The arrival, a little later, of the detective was a relief to every one.
Mrs. Varrick hastily explained to him what had occurred, and her reason
for supposing that the theft of the diamond bracelet had been
accomplished by some one in the house.
"Such a suspicion is, of course, very painful to me," she said; "but
under the circumstances I think it is better for the satisfaction of all
concerned that I should accept the offer made by my servants, and
request you to search their apartments. Miss Duncan, and Miss Jessie
Bain, my son's ward, will, just for form's sake, undergo the same
unpleasant ordeal."
"Must I have my room searched, too?" asked Jessie Bain.
"Is there any reason why you should object?" asked Mrs. Varrick.
"No," answered Jessie, lifting her beautiful, innocent blue eyes to the
face of Hubert's mother; "there is no reason, only--only--"
Here she stopped short, the color coming and going on her lovely face,
and a frightened look creeping about her quivering mouth.
"I have no objection," she repeated, "to having everything in my room
searched; but, oh! it seems so terrible to have to do it!"
"Do your duty, sir," said Mrs. Varrick, turning to the detective.
She and the detective left the morning-room together, and they were all
startled at the sound of the key turning in the lock as the door closed
after them. Half an hour, an hour, and at length a second hour dragged
slowly by.
Suddenly in the silence that had fallen upon the inmates of the
morning-room they caught the distant sound of the detective's deep
voice and the rustle of Mrs. Varrick's silk dress coming down the
corridor.
Mrs. Varrick and the detective advanced to the center of the room, then
she stopped suddenly.
"As you see," she commenced, in a high, shrill voice "the bracelet has
been unearthed and the thief discovered. I shall not prolong this
painful scene a moment longer than is absolutely necessary. Suffice it
to say, the girl I have befriended has robbed me.
"The bracelet was found by the detective in the little hair trunk of
Jessie Bain. You will all please leave the room, all save Miss Bain."
They all rose from their seats, and there was a great babble of voices.
As in a dream, Jessie saw them all file slowly out of the room, each one
casting that backward look of horror upon her as they went. The door
closed slowly after Miss Duncan; then she was alone with the detective
and Mrs Varrick, Hubert's mother.
"There are no words that I can find to express to you, Jessie Bain, my
amazement and sorrow," she began, "at this, the evidence of your guilt."
"Oh, Mrs. Varrick!" gasped Jessie, finding breath at last, though her
head seemed to reel with the horror of the situation, "by all that I
hold dear in this world, believe me, I am not guilty. I swear to you I
did not take your bracelet; I know as little of the theft as an unborn
babe!"
Mrs. Varrick drew herself up haughtily.
"The detective wishes me to give you up to the law, to cast you into
prison, but I can not quite make up my mind to do it. Now listen.
Because of my son's interest in you, I will spare you on one condition,
and that is, that you leave this place within the hour, and go far
away--so far that you will never again see any one who might know you;
least of all, my son. His anger against you would be terrible."
All in vain Jessie threw herself at her feet, protesting over and over
again her innocence, and calling upon God and the angels to bear witness
to the truth of what she said.
The detective had been pacing up and down the room, an expression of the
deepest concern on his face.
He noted that instead of being glad to get off so easily from a terrible
affair that would cost her many a year behind grim prison walls, this
girl's agonizing cry was that she should remain there and prove her
innocence to Hubert Varrick.
Surely, he thought, there must be some way of doing so. But Mrs. Varrick
was inexorable.
The girl's lovely head was bowed to the very earth.
"Have pity on me," moaned Jessie Bain, "and show me mercy!"
"I will give you ten minutes to decide your future," was Mrs. Varrick's
heartless reply.
When the ten minutes had elapsed, Mrs. Varrick rose majestically to her
feet.