By this time I had become rather angry myself. “I don’t know,” I said, “whether you mean to admit in this way that I had thought correctly, but if you suggest that I had come here to blackmail you, or that you can offer me money in that way----” Here Lady Meskell, somewhat to my surprise, burst into peals of laughter. She sat down and rubbed her fat hands together cheerfully. “You are a very good girl,” she said. “I thought you were from the first. But I was just making sure. No, unromantic though it may seem, there is no _liaison_ between myself and the man--he happens to be a cook--whom you saw leaving the garden. But, amid your mistakes, you made one or two very happy guesses. It is true that he took my pearls, and that I knew all along he had taken them, and that I knew his name. The advertisement will keep on appearing for the rest of this week. I have my own reasons for that. But, as a matter of fact, the pearls were returned to me the day before yesterday. I have got them upstairs, and I will show them to you, if you like, before you go.” “They were returned to you by this cook man?” “Oh, dear, no! That wouldn’t have done at all. I can’t compound a felony. At any rate, if I do, there must be no evidence of it. My friend the cook quite understood that. A nice, ruddy-faced cabman brought the pearls back and described how his little girl had found them in the gutter, and had supposed them to be beads and had worn them ever since. He knew it was a lie, and I knew it was a lie, and he knew that I knew. But we went through it all with perfect solemnity. My expert went over the pearls to see that they were all right, and the bank-notes were handed to the cabman. But I think that as you’ve been so clever--a little too clever, perhaps--you ought not to be left in the dark as to the rest of the story. I did not want to prosecute, because I did not want to have everybody laughing at me, and they would certainly have laughed. Tell me, did you find out nothing else about me?” “Two or three other things. You were connected in different ways with several charities. Then again, you----” “That’ll do. It began with the charities. I came across this good gentleman in hospital. He is an Italian; he has a bright and sunny imagination, and he told me strange stories of streets at the back of Tottenham Court Road. After demanding a pledge of secrecy he confessed himself to be an Anarchist.” “Then it was romantic, after all?”