Pamela cleared her throat and said in a tone that tried hard to be indifferent and casual. "Mother thinks--I’ve stolen that brooch--and told a lie--because----" stifled silence ensued. "Well," said Hughie, "that’s very ridiculous." "Not when you hear--what it’s about----" again there was a pause, then starting on a lower note altogether Pamela said: "Mother wanted to hear about the brooch, Addie made her. So, after a week, you see, she wrote to Miss Ashington and asked what had happened and if it was hers--I mean if the brooch was. This morning Auntie A. sent down a note--all scrawly and covered with blots and half the words left out as usual," this description was emphasized bitterly, "and she said--she said that I fetched the brooch on the same evening you and Miss Chance took it--you remember, Midget, a week ago to-day." "I know," agreed Hughie, "the morning Charles ate the laurel water." "Yes, well she says, _I_ came in the evening about nine, or half-past nine, and said Mother sent me for the brooch, and she gave it to me--she says a good deal more; something about her work-basket being upset; but anyway _I_ took the brooch away, and there’s an end to it." "Why, it was the girl--my goodness, she’s a funny person!" said Hughie. "She’s a beast. She’s a perfect beast without any decency or sense of honour," declared Pamela in a stormy burst of indignation. "I told her to write to Sir Marmaduke and ask him to claim it from Auntie A. It was perfectly simple. Then she goes and plays this low trick again." "You’d better tell about her," suggested Hughie with interest. "I said I wouldn’t. She said it would get her into awful trouble." "Well, she gets you into trouble." "I know, but, Midget, she’s all alone--her mother seems to be dead; her father was killed in the War. Fancy being shut up with Chipman and no one decent to speak to! You see, I don’t _blame_ her for trying to get her brooch back--she might do that----" "It was rather clever," Hughie chuckled suddenly, "a sort of short cut, Pam." "I daresay, but people oughtn’t to use short cuts that hurt other people so awfully." "She’s selfish," said Hughie gravely, "_fearfully_ selfish, she doesn’t care when the others get hurt." There was a long pause; then Pamela announced that she wasn’t coming down to dinner; she told him that Mrs. Romilly had gone off to Crown Hill to see Miss Ashington. "What did Mum say to you?" asked Hughie. "Nothing. Not a word--she gave me the letter to read." "What did you say?" "I was feeling so sick and awful, I don’t know what I said--except that I didn’t go at all. It sounded so helpless in the face of that letter." "I think I’ll go to dinner," announced Hughie suddenly, and he picked himself up, dusting himself in an incomplete manner.