“No,” Victoria said dully. “It’s an imitation I had made a little more than a year ago.” She added with a spurt of anger, “You knew that all right, didn’t you? I suppose Judy’s been telling you all about it.” “Let Judy alone!” the old woman rapped out. “She’s told me no secrets that weren’t her own.” She turned from Victoria and addressed herself to Bruce Applebury, abandoning as she did so a good deal of her harshness of manner. Indeed for her she spoke almost gently. I scented danger for him, but apparently he did not. “Judy tells me,” Mrs. Corbin said, “that when she ran away with your cousin last night she meant to marry him. She says she’ll marry him now if the necklace can be recovered, but that if it can not be recovered, she stands ready to marry you. A wedding is a bargain, and it takes two to make it. Are you still willing to marry her?” “Yes,” Bruce said. “Certainly. That’s all I ask; to go on as if nothing had happened.” He glanced toward Judy, but she gave no sign of having heard him or of even knowing that he was in the room. “She understands that, I think,” he went on a little less confidently. “We talked it out pretty thoroughly yesterday afternoon.” “The necklace hadn’t been stolen then,” the old lady remarked. “Where was it?” “It happened to be in my pocket,” Bruce said. “I’d gone into town to get it and she met me at the train.” “Whose was it then?” Mrs. Corbin asked him. The question obviously took him aback and he repeated it stupidly. She flung it back at him. “Yes, to whom did the necklace belong then?” “I understood,” he said, “that it belonged to you.” “You’re perfectly right,” she assured him grimly. “It did. And last night at dinner I gave it to Judy. It was my intention, at least, to give it to her, and give it I did, although it wasn’t the thing she put around her neck. The real necklace was hers last night. But whose was it when it was stolen, Mr. Applebury?” He perceived the pitfall now, but too late to keep from plunging into it. He was neither a naturally endowed nor a practised liar. “Why--it was hers, I suppose,” he said. “Hadn’t she given it to you?” He flushed deeply. “I hadn’t accepted it,” he said. “Do you believe your cousin stole it?” she asked. “That’s not a pleasant conclusion to come to,” he told her. “But it’s hard to see how one can believe anything else.” “Don’t palaver,” the old woman snapped at him. “Do you believe he stole it?” Bruce hesitated, looking acutely unhappy, but at last he said, “Yes, I do.” “Judy doesn’t,” Mrs. Corbin returned. “She says she’d marry him now if the necklace could be recovered. She wouldn’t marry any one she believed to be a thief. But she seems to feel that you have a right either to her or to the necklace. If she can’t produce the necklace, she’s bound to marry you. Is that the way you look at it yourself?” “That’s a perfectly unfair way of putting it,” he protested. She gave a short grim laugh. “It’ll serve well enough I think,” she said.