“He hadn’t! He hadn’t!” she assented in a voice like a wail. “And when we tried to find Mr. Gardner he was gone. Gone off the yacht. Had run away. So then Mr. Viles went ashore himself, and by and by he came back, very well pleased, and said they had caught Mr. Gardner on the boat and had the necklace back again.” “Did you run away right then?” he asked, when he saw she had forgotten to go on. She hesitated, as though choosing her words. “No,” she told him. “That was the day before. I was very unhappy even then. But until the next day I did not realize. Mr. Viles made me see. It was just before dinner, and I met him in the main cabin. He was very expansive and very good-humored and triumphant. He spoke of Mr. Gardner. And he said this to me.” She repeated the words in a curious, parrot-like tone, as though they were engraved upon her memory. “He said: ‘It’s lucky you saw him, Lucia. If you hadn’t actually seen him come out of your cabin with the necklace in his hands we probably couldn’t send him to jail, even now!’” Jeff was watching her attentively, waiting. “I hadn’t really understood, before, that they would send him to jail,” the woman cried. “I asked Mr. Viles if he meant to do that, and begged him not to; and he just laughed at me. He said: ‘He’ll do ten years for this little piece of work, Lucia. And you’ll be the one whose testimony will send him up. That ought to be a satisfaction to you.’” She added, with a movement of her hands as though everything were explained, “So I ran away. There was a sailor who helped me and gave me his coat, and I ran away, and got in your car because it was raining so hard and that was the first place I saw where I could hide and be sheltered from the rain.” She broke off abruptly; and neither of them spoke for a period, while Jeff considered that which she had told him. At length he asked gently, “You didn’t want to see this here Gardner in jail?” The woman cried passionately, “No! No! Oh, he was wrong to steal. If I had not seen him I would never have believed--But I didn’t want to put him in jail!” “I guess you liked him pretty well,” Jeff said. His tone was sympathetic, not inquisitive. “Yes,” she nodded sadly, as though she spoke of one who were dead. “Yes, I did.” With a sudden confidence she added, “Why, he was my best friend. We knew each other so well. It was through him I met Mr. Viles. And then Frank had to go to Europe on business for Mr. Viles, and he was away so long, and I did not hear from him. I used to work, you know. I was a buyer in one of the New York stores. And Mr. Viles was ever so good to me, and I was tired, and he begged me so. That was how I came to marry him.” “I don’t figure you ever loved him very much,” Jeff suggested after an interval. “He was good to me at first,” she protested. “I think he meant to be good to me.”