"She hasn't," said Mrs Warren. "She don't seem to know how to behave to anyone, except as if they were girls like herself. Liza Stroud wants to get her into good service, but she ain't anyhow fit for it. No lady, nor no lady's housekeeper, would put up with her for a week with them manners. But I'm in hopes to stroke her down gradually and unconscious-like, for she's very like her poor brother, and 'tis no manner of use driving her. Miss Geraldine's a fine young lady too, and favours poor Mr Alwyn remarkably." "Yes, there it is again," said the old lady. "Miss Geraldine's kept so strict in the schoolroom that she don't know what to do when she gets out of it. She ought to be with ladies in the drawing-room, as would bring her on to receive company like her dear mamma, and sit down nice with her needlework. Oh, dear! that was a sore time, that there unlucky night at Ravenshurst." "Granny," said Mrs Warren, "I've often wondered what _you_ thought became of the jewels." "My dear, I've thought of they jewels day and night, nor never could give a guess about them. I knew the young gentlemen had some mischief on hand, laughing and plotting, and Mr Edgar told me some of the tricks as they played on each other up at Ravenshurst--which I told him weren't such as young gentlemen and ladies should condescend to. But there, they all went off on their visit, and only the master and Mr Edgar came back." "I was sitting here," pursued Granny, "in the dusk that next evening, when Mr Alwyn came rushing up the stairs--dear, dear! Miss Geraldine do fly up them just as he used--and told me to fetch Edgar to wish him good-bye, as he'd never see or speak to his father again. So I found Mr Edgar, and he came, but slow, and looking as white as that handkerchief. But they joked and laughed, and tried to be the one as fierce as the other. Then Mr Alwyn turned round to me, and swore Harry Whittaker never saw the jewels. `And you don't think I've got 'em, Bunny?' said Mr Alwyn, laughing. But they wouldn't say not another word, and they was both awful hard when they spoke of master. But they made believe to laugh and make a mock of it when they was wishing each other good-bye, only I could see poor Mr Edgar was half-choking all the time, and when his brother was gone he near fainted. But never did I think when he laughed again, and said he'd had a slip and twisted his back, and the pain took him sudden, of all that was to come of it, and that he'd never come running up they stairs again." "Well, then," said Mrs Charles Warren, "all we ever knew was that there was that bit put in the paper about a foolish and unjustifiable trick had been taken advantage of by dishonest people--valuable jewels, hidden in play, had disappeared. The person who hid them had owned that it had been done without the connivance of the young men whose names had been mentioned. But who _were_ that person?"