The servant who had brought breakfast to her on a covered salver had never approached the toilet-table she was certain; but Miss De Jobbyns had, as she remembered, lingered before the mirror, and trifled with the little etceteras that lay thereby. Could she be the abstractor, the delinquent, the thief? Impossible! Yet Alison had barely completed attiring herself for the street, with the intention of asking permission to go out for a little time, when a maid appeared, sent by Mrs. De Jobbyns, to request her presence in the drawing-room. 'In the drawing-room,' thought Alison; 'what does that import?' On entering, the first object that caught her eye was her locket in that lady's hand, and she had a perfect conviction that the latter and her daughter were inflamed with keen resentment. 'Jealousy,' we are told, 'smacks of low life and the drama.' Be that as it may, Alison was now fated to a sample thereof. 'Is this your property, Miss Cheyne?' asked Mrs. Slumpkin De Jobbyns, frigidly, yet tremulous with passion. 'It is; and how came it in your possession, I demand?' exclaimed Alison. 'You demand?' 'Yes.' 'That matters little.' 'It matters very much indeed,' said Alison, her spirit rising to the occasion; 'a theft has been committed, else my locket would have been where I left it, on my toilet-table.' 'Do not attempt to bandy words with me,' said the lady of the mansion, assuming a bullying tone. 'But how is it that the likeness of a friend of this family--of a gentleman visitor--a stranger to a person in your position, of course--is in your possession?' 'And how do you dare to wear it?' added Miss De Jobbyns, in a shrill voice of passion, as her mother tossed the locket to the feet of Alison, who regained it, and deliberately placed it in the bosom of her dress. 'What would he--what must we--think of you?' asked Mrs. De Jobbyns, in a louder key. Alison disdained to make any reply. 'You are unfit to teach my darlings--if you have not corrupted their angel minds already--and I request you to quit Pembridge Square at once. The housekeeper will give you what is due in lieu of a month's notice.' Alison had not been unprepared for this dictum. She had heard it without a shock, and, though certainly dismayed by the sudden turn her affairs had taken, at once prepared for and took her departure. She kissed and bade adieu to her two little pupils, Irene and Iseulte, whose names had no doubt been suggested by the _London Journal_--a periodical much affected by Mrs. Slumpkin De Jobbyns in her youth, and then drove away. The daughter of the house, enraged and bewildered, knew not precisely _what_ to think of the affair, but she had a gloomy fear that so far as Bevil Goring was concerned her hopes were vanishing into thin air, or on the eve of being shattered like the crystal in the basket of Alnaschar, of whom no doubt she never heard.