"I would give anything to know whether Harper and his wife are under suspicion!" said Emmie to herself. "Susan is so strangely unwilling to give full information, she stammers as she answers my questions. I think that my father must have charged her to say nothing that could possibly agitate my nerves. He has desired that his weak daughter should be kept from excitement; and thus I, who have the deepest interest in all that is happening here, am more ignorant of what is going on than any servant in the household. I must question Susan again." Emmie was about to ring the bell for her maid; but before she did so, there was a quick tap at the door, and, without waiting for the lady's "Come in," Hannah entered the room. The cook looked more excited than Susan had done; but while, in the case of the latter, there had been an appearance of perplexity, if not of pain, with a desire to speak as little as she could, Hannah's face, on the contrary, showed that she was not only brimming over with news, but that she had a vulgar pleasure in being the first to impart it. "Now I shall know all," thought Emmie. "La, miss!" exclaimed Hannah, "to think of you taking your breakfast so quietly here, as if nothing had happened, when there be such goings on in the place!" "Any one arrested?" asked Emmie eagerly. She dared not mention the names of Harper or Jessel, lest, by turning suspicion on them, she should indirectly violate her oath. "No one took up yet, that I know of, but he in London," said Hannah. "Didn't master go off like a shot, as soon as he heard the news!" "What news? who was taken up?" asked Emmie. "La, miss! you don't mean to say that you've not heard of the scrape of poor Master Vibert, how he's been catched and put into jail!" Emmie staggered backwards as though she had been struck. "Put into jail! my brother! and on what pretext?" she exclaimed, grasping the table for support. "I'll tell you all about it--you ought to know, seeing you're his own sister," said Hannah, enjoying the excitement of the scene, and yet not without a touch of natural pity, on seeing the anguish which she inflicted. "Master Vibert went yesterday to London, you know; and when he got there, he went off straight to a jeweller (Golding, I think, is the name), and bought from him lots of jewels, diamonds, pearls, and all kinds of gim-cracks, worth more than a thousand pounds." "Impossible!" exclaimed Emmie. "But he did buy the jewels, and paid for them too with a lot of nice, fresh, clean ten-pound notes," said Hannah. "The shopman didn't suspect nothing at first, 'cause he knew the young gentleman's face so well, as he'd often dealt at the shop. But when the head of the firm, as they call him, came in the afternoon to look after the business (there's nothing like a master's eye, we know), he said the notes weren't real and honest bank-notes; and off he went at once to the biggest police-station in London."