"La! Prue, I thought you would be mortified to death at such a tame ending to your romantic adventure, and you seem delighted," replied Barbara, with pique. "One of the serving-wenches at Marlborough House, finding the royal tiring-room for a moment unguarded, took her sweetheart in, and not content with gazing, they must needs carry their audacity to the point of fingering Her Majesty’s toilet-articles, and so came upon the necklace in its case, which so dazzled them, I presume, that they turned crazy, and hearing voices at one door, ran out of another and found themselves back in the servants’ quarters with the necklace in their possession. The girl swears they did not mean to steal it, but did not know how to get it back unobserved, and finally the lover, in a panic, fled from the house, carrying the perilous pelf with him." "A probable story, indeed!" cried Beachcombe scoffingly. "It might account for the disappearance of the jewel, but scarcely for its restoration." "Oh! that was a case of conscience, a thing quite incomprehensible of course to an ’_esprit fort_,’ such as your lordship," retorted Barbara. "The girl suffered tortures, it appears, during which she was a dozen times on the point of confessing, but hesitated for fear of incriminating her lover. Then came the story of the return of the necklace, which, by the time it reached the still-room, had grown to the wildest of marvels. After that, no one seems to know exactly what happened, but possibly, between fear of her own part in the affair and rage at the treachery of her lover, the wretched creature lost what few senses she had and actually forced her way into the presence of the duchess, where she groveled on the floor, confessing and accusing and Lord knows what besides, and was carried out raving and foaming at the mouth." "And so she confessed that she and her lover had stolen, or at any rate carried off the necklace," commented Prue thoughtfully. "Then how do you account for its restoration by Robin Freemantle?" Beachcombe inquired, with his stealthy eyes upon her. "Do you persist, even now, in connecting him with this affair?" she retorted, facing him defiantly. "For my part, I am now thoroughly convinced that it was a very vulgar matter and that I have been made a fool and a tool of by a pack of low wretches. Do not let any one who does not wish to offend me, ever mention my part in it again." "On the contrary—" Barbara was beginning, when Peggie, from the window, uttered a cry of admiration. "Is that your new chair at the door, Barbara?" she cried. "Sure, ’tis the finest in town!" "Ah! I had for the moment forgotten—’twas but to display it I came here this afternoon—to show that and to scold Prue for a faithless friend." They all followed her to the window, and in the street below stood a most superb sedan-chair, all carving and gilding, lined and curtained with crimson, and borne by four strapping footmen in liveries to match.