Annabel stood at the right hand of the Duchess, but was strangely distrait and silent. Everything had gone wrong with her. It had been a day of calamity. She began it with a fret and a scold, and her maid Justine had been from that moment in a temper calculated to provoke to extremities her impatient mistress. Then her costume did not arrive till some hours after it was due; and when examined, it was found to be very unbecoming. She had been persuaded to select a pale blue satin, simply because she had tired of every other colour; and she was disgusted with the effect of its cold beauty against her olive-tinted skin. She wore out Justine's temper with the variety of her suggestions, and her angry impatience with every effort. The girl became sulkily silent, then defiantly silent, then, after a most unreasonable burst of anger, actively impertinent, so much so that she left Annabel only one way of retaliation--an instant dismissal. She lifted her purse passionately, counted out the money due, and, pushing it contemptuously towards the girl, told her "to leave the house instantly." To her utter amazement, Justine pushed back the money. "I will not take it," she said. "I have no intention of leaving the house until I see the ring in your possession--the ring in your purse, Miss--returned to the owner of it." If Annabel had been struck to the ground, she could not have been more confounded and bewildered; and Justine saw and pushed her advantage. "Miss knows," she continued, "that police detectives are watching night and day the innocent men whose duties are on this corridor. Any hour some little thing may cause one of them to be suspected and arrested; and then who but I could save him from the gallows? No, Miss, I shall not leave till you give up the ring--till the real th--the real taker of it is known." These words terrified Annabel. She felt her heart stop beating; a strange sickness overwhelmed her; she sunk speechless into a chair, and closed her eyes. With an attention utterly devoid of sympathy, Justine put between her lips a tea-spoonful of aniseed cordial which she brought from her own apartment.