Doubtless despair had benumbed Wibberley's mind, for he did not reply, and Burton Smith had to put his question more than once before he got an answer. When Wibberley at last looked up it was with a dazed face. "What is it?" he muttered, avoiding the other's eyes. "This is not Lady Linacre's bracelet." "That's not?" "No; certainly not." Still confused, still shunning the other's look, Wibberley rose, took the bracelet in his hand, and frowned at it. Burton Smith saw him start. "It is of the same shape," the barrister repeated, ice in his voice--he thought the exchange a foolish, transparent artifice--worse than the theft. "But Lady Linacre's has a large brilliant where that has a plain boss. That is not the bracelet." Wibberley turned away, the thing in his hand, and went to the window, and stood there a long moment looking out into the darkness. The curtains were not drawn. As he stood, otherwise motionless, his shoulders trembled so violently that a dreadful suspicion seized his late host, who desisted from watching him and looked about, but in vain, for a phial or a glass. At the end of the minute Wibberley turned. For the first time he confronted his visitor. His eyes were bright, his face very pale; but his mouth was set and firm. "I never said it was!" he answered. "Was what?" the other cried impatiently. "I never said it was Lady Linacre's. It was you who said that," he continued, his head high, a change in his demeanour, an incisiveness almost harsh in his tone. "It was you--you who suspected me! I could not show you my arm because I had that bracelet on it." "And whose bracelet is it?" Burton Smith murmured, shaken as much by the sudden change in the man's demeanour as by his denial. "It is your cousin's--Miss Burton's. We are engaged," Wibberley continued sternly--so entirely had the two changed places. "She intended to tell you to-morrow. I saw it on the table, and secreted it when I thought that no one was looking. I needed a pattern--for a bracelet I am giving her." "And it was Joanna's bracelet that Vereker May saw you take?" "Precisely." Burton Smith said a word about the Civilian which we need not repeat. Then, "But why on earth, old fellow, did you not explain?" he asked. "First," Wibberley replied with force, "because I should have had to proclaim my engagement to all those fools; and I had not Joanna's permission to do that. Secondly--well, I did not wish to confess to being such an idiot as I was." "Ah!" said Burton Smith, slowly, an odd light in his eyes. "I think you were a fool, but--I suppose you will shake hands?" "Certainly, old man." And they did so, warmly. "Now," continued the barrister, his face becoming serious again, "the question is, where is Lady Linacre's bracelet?" "I don't care a d----n," Wibberley answered. "I am sure you will excuse me saying so. I have had trouble enough with it--I know that--and, if you do not mind, I am going to bed."