Alice entered the breakfast-room, begging pardon for her late appearance. It was readily accorded. Her office in the house was nearly a sinecure. When she had first entered upon it Lady Sarah was ill, and required some one to sit with and read to her: now that she was well again, Alice had little to do. Breakfast was scarcely over when Alice was called from the room. Hughes stood outside the door. "Miss Seaton," said she, with a long face, "the diamond bracelet is not in the box. I thought I could not be mistaken." "But it must be in the box," said Alice. "But it is _not_," persisted Hughes, emphasizing the negative. "Can't you believe me, ma'am? I want to know where it is, that I may put it up and lock the box." Alice Seaton looked at Hughes with a puzzled, dreamy look. She was thinking matters over. Her face soon cleared again. "Then Lady Sarah must have kept it out when she put in the rest. It was she who returned them to the case; I did not. Perhaps she wore it last night." "No, miss, that she didn't. She wore only those two----" "I saw what she had on," interrupted Alice. "But she might also have put on the other, without my noticing. Or she may have kept it out for some other purpose. I will ask her. Wait here an instant, Hughes; for of course you will like to be at a certainty." "That's cool," thought Hughes, as Alice went into the breakfast-room, and the colonel came out of it, with his _Times_. "I should have said it was somebody else would like to be at a certainty, instead of me," continued the girl, indulging in soliloquy. "Thank goodness the box wasn't in my charge last night, if anything dreadful has come to pass. My lady don't keep out her bracelets for sport. Miss Seaton has left the key about, that's what she has done, and it's hard to say who hasn't been at it: I knew the box had been ransacked over." "Lady Sarah," said Alice, "did you wear your new diamond bracelet last night?" "No." "Then did you put it into the box with the others?" "No," repeated Lady Sarah, who was languidly toying with a basket of ferns. "After you had chosen the bracelets you wished to wear, you put the others into the box yourself," explained Alice, thinking she was not understood. "Did you put in the new one, the diamond, or keep it out?" "The new one was not there." Alice stood confounded. "It was lying on the table, at the back of all the rest, Lady Sarah," she presently said. "Next the window." "I tell you, Alice, it was not there. I don't know that I should have worn it if it had been, but I certainly looked for it. Not seeing it, I supposed you had not put it out; and I did not care sufficiently to ask for it." Alice felt in a mesh of perplexity; curious thoughts, and very unpleasing ones, were beginning to dawn upon her. "But indeed the bracelet was there when you went to the table," she urged. "I put it there."