He looked at the party--himself sitting a little aside, as we have said. They were none of them facing his way. They were discussing a photograph on the overmantel, a photograph of children. He extended his hand and covered the bracelet. He would take it for a pattern, and to-morrow Joanna should ransom it. He tried, as his fingers closed on it, to catch her eye. He would fain have seen her face change and her colour rise. It would have added to the charm which the boyish, foolish act had for him, if she had been privy to it--yet unable to prevent it. But she would not look; and he was obliged to be content with his plunder. He slid the gold trifle deftly under the fringe of the table, and clasped it round his arm--not a lusty arm--thrusting it as high as it would go that no movement of his shirt-cuff might disclose it. He had a keen sense of the ridiculous, and he would not for the world that any besides Joanna should see the act: that doddering old fossil May, for instance, who, however, was safe enough--standing on the rug with his back turned, and his slow mind forming an opinion on the photograph. Then--or within a few minutes, at any rate--Wibberley began to find the party dull. He saw no chance of a private word with Joanna. Lady Linacre, his nearest neighbour, was prosing on to Mrs. Burton Smith, his next nearest. And he himself, after shining at dinner, had fallen into the background. Hang it, he would go! It was ten o'clock. He rose, and was stooping across the table, murmuring his excuses to Mrs. Burton Smith, when Lady Linacre uttered an exclamation. He was leaning across her between her head and the lamp, and he fancied he had touched her head-dress. "Pray pardon me, Lady Linacre!" he cried gaily. "I am just going--I have to leave early. So the encroachment will be but for a moment." "It is not that," the old lady replied. "But where is my bracelet?" She was feeling about the table as she spoke, shifting with her white, podgy hands the volumes that lay on it. No one on the instant took in the situation. Mrs. Burton Smith had risen, and was listening to Wibberley. The others were talking. But Lady Linacre was used to attention; and when she spoke again her voice was shrill, and almost indecently loud. "Where is my bracelet?" she repeated. "The one with the Agra diamond that I was showing you, Mrs. Burton Smith. It was here a moment ago, and it is gone! It is gone!" Wibberley was still speaking to his hostess. He heard the old lady's words, but did not at once apply them. He finished his leave-taking at his leisure, and only as he turned recollected himself, and said, with polite solicitude, "What is it, Lady Linacre? Have you dropped something? Can I find it for you?" He stooped as he spoke; and she drew her skirt aside, and both peered at the floor, while there was a chorus from those sitting nearest of, "What is it, Lady Linacre? Dear Lady Linacre, what have you lost?"