“It seemed such an ideal way of settling mother’s troubles that I wanted to let it ride, just as she did. We didn’t care whether Gran had hidden it somewhere and forgotten, or whether it had really been stolen. If it had, it was a joke on the thief, that’s all. All we wanted was to keep Uncle Alec from sending for the police, which would have made a lot of trouble, especially if they got it back and found it was only an imitation after all. Well, you got him quieted down, and that seemed to be all right. “I read Bill’s letter by the light of Punch’s bicycle lantern that night and saw that he felt the same way that I did about everything. He didn’t want me to marry Bruce, anyhow. All we needed was a good long talk, which might be rather hard to manage, of course, and we’d work everything out. “Then, awfully early yesterday morning, mother came in in her nightgown, half wild, to tell me that the imitation necklace had turned up again in grandmother’s room, and that Mr. Smith was coming that morning. She accused Punch of having taken it, and called him a little fiend for bringing it back. “She came back about an hour later, though, a whole lot calmer and said she’d got everything fixed up. Bruce was going into town, she said, to get the necklace. He’d told her how to work it and she’d given him the sort of note the bank wanted. He’d be back with it on the three o’clock train in time for the rehearsal. “She wanted me to get up and dress right away and drive Bruce to the station, but not go in town with him because he’d be awfully busy and I’d be in his way. She told me not to say anything to him about the necklace. She wanted the crowd to think I’d gone in with him, though, so that his going off like that wouldn’t look queer. I was to keep out of sight wherever I pleased till it was time for his train to come back. And she said she’d fixed Mr. Smith so that he wouldn’t come to the house till dinner to-night. “Well, of course it would have looked fishy to me if I’d thought about it at all. But the only thing I thought of was that here was a perfectly heaven-sent chance for my talk with Bill. So I sent a note up to him and told him where to meet me. “We went up to the summer-house, thinking it would be the safest place there was, and found you there with old Mr. Smith. He’d seen us through his field-glasses, of course, and we must have given him something to think about. But it didn’t seem to matter much then. We got away as soon as we could and had our talk. “Bill was stubborn about it. He wouldn’t hear of my marrying him, then. The only thing to do, he said, was to call off the marriage with Bruce. He wanted that and my marriage to him, he said, to be two separate things. I told him he wanted to be sure he wasn’t getting me on the rebound. But of course that wasn’t fair. I can really see how it looked to him. He’s--well, he’s like that.