The colonel was about to storm forth an answer, but her white face, her heaving throat, had some effect upon him. Perhaps, also, he was thinking of his dead brother. "He is so doggedly obstinate, you see, Miss Dalrymple! If he would only confess, and tell where it is, perhaps I'd let him off." Alice thought some one else was obstinate. "I do not believe he has anything to confess," she deliberately said; "I truly believe that he has not. He could not have taken it, unseen by me: and when we quitted the room, I feel sure the bracelet was left in it." "It was," said Gerard. "When I left the room, I left the bracelet in it, so help me Heaven!" "And, now, I shall speak," put in Frances Chenevix. "Colonel, if you press the charge against Gerard, I will go before the magistrate, and proclaim myself the thief. I vow and protest I will; just to save him. And you and Sarah could not prosecute _me_, you know." "_You_ do well to stand up for him!" retorted the colonel. "You would not be quite so ready to do it, my Lady Fanny, if you knew something I could tell you." "Oh yes, I should," returned the young lady, with a vivid blush. The colonel, beset on all sides, had no choice but to submit; but he did so with an ill grace, and dashed out of the room with Mr. Pullet as fiercely as though he had been charging an enemy at full tilt. "The sentimental apes these women make themselves!" cried he, in his polite way, when he got Mr. Pullet in private. "Is it not a clear case of guilt?" "In my private opinion, it certainly is," was the reply; "though he carries it off with a high hand. I suppose, colonel, you still wish the bracelet to be searched for?" "Search in and out, high and low; search everywhere. The rascal! to dare even to enter my house in secret!" "May I be allowed to inquire, colonel, whether the previous estrangement between you and your nephew had anything to do with money matters?" "No," said the colonel, turning more crusty at the thoughts called up. "I fixed upon a wife for him, and he wouldn't have her; so I turned him out-of-doors and stopped his allowance." "Oh," was the only comment of Mr. Pullet. So Gerard was allowed to go out of the house, a free man. It was the following week, and Saturday night. Thomas was standing at Colonel Hope's door without his hat, a pastime he much favoured, chatting sociably with an acquaintance, when he perceived Gerard come tearing up the street. Thomas's friend backed against the rails and the spikes, and Thomas himself stood with the door in his hand, ready to touch his hair to Mr. Gerard, as he passed. Instead of passing, however, Gerard cleared the steps at a bound, pulled Thomas with himself inside, shut the door, and double-locked it. Thomas was surprised in all ways. Not only at Mr. Hope's coming in at all, for the colonel had most solemnly interdicted it, but at the suddenness and strangeness of the action.