“I suppose I’ve made mistakes. We all do. But between her and the children I’ve been driven half distracted. Not Punch. He’s all right. But there have been times when I’ve been in despair about Judy.” “Isn’t she pretty young to have been despaired about?” I protested. “She ran away from school last fall,” said Victoria. “I wonder if even _you_ had heard about that? She simply disappeared for almost a month. There, I’m glad I told you. You’ll have some idea....” “Good heavens!” I broke in. “Didn’t you hear from her in all that time? How did you know she hadn’t been kidnapped--murdered?” “I got a line from her every two or three days, post-marked from different places, saying she was all right and telling me not to worry.” “But how did she live?” I asked. “What had she to live on?” “She earned it,” Victoria said shortly. “You may be perfectly sure I haven’t asked for details. But she’s volunteered a few. I know she worked for a while as a waitress in a cheap lunch room.” “How did you get her back?” “Oh, she’d had enough of it, I suppose. She wrote me that if I wanted her to come back she was ready to behave herself. I met her in New York. Found her in the Martha Washington Hotel, fitted her out with clothes, and took her, by a lucky chance, down to Belleair.” “What did she look like--when you found her, I mean?” “She looked,” Victoria said dryly, “as if she hadn’t found liberty quite so jolly as she’d expected.” “What was the particular piece of luck about your choosing Belleair?” “Why, Bruce was down there playing golf,” she said. “And it just happened she got him. Of course if he’d known.... But there’s no reason why he ever should. So now she’s all right. She’s marrying a man--an orphan, thank heaven!--who’s well-bred and decently rich, and mad about her.” “Is she in love with him?” I asked. “No,” Victoria admitted, “I don’t suppose she is. But she likes him, and she wants to marry him. She’s going into it with her eyes open. And not under any pressure from me. I didn’t urge it on her. Anyhow, that’s _settled_. She’s going to marry him day after to-morrow. “Well, I’m not going to have her wedding spoiled by exploding a beastly thing like this in the middle of it.” “There’s nothing beastly about getting robbed of a necklace,” I said. “That can happen to anybody.” She flung out her hands in a gesture of uncontrollable exasperation. Then she pulled herself together. “The first discovery a detective would make would be that Mrs. Corbin is a morphine addict. That would be rather unsavory, wouldn’t it?” “She gets the stuff legitimately, doesn’t she?” I commented. “Nobody as old and rich as that could be reduced to trafficking with a peddler.” “Oh, yes,” she admitted. “Doctor Parkinson prescribes it for her. But isn’t that bad enough? Bruce would hate it--just the notoriety--worse than anybody I know. Things like that simply don’t happen in his family. He’d think less of Judy if it happened in hers.”