With dumb gratitude in her eyes poor Rhoda stole upstairs again and shut herself once more in her room. She was heartbroken over the unhappy affair, and could not help considering herself to have failed in her duty as custodian. As for the identity of the thief, she could not even make a reasonable guess. The household was a large one, there were members of it she had never even seen. As perhaps none of them knew that she had duplicate keys, except one or two of the upper servants who were wholly to be trusted, Rhoda began to ask herself whether Sir Robert’s suggestion might not be a good one, that she had dropped the keys on to the soft carpet of the corridor as she came out of the study, instead of slipping them into her pocket. In the meantime she would make sure that her pocket was really sound, as she supposed. So she opened her wardrobe once more, and thrust her hand again into the pocket in which she usually carried the keys. And the keys were there, not one missing. Rhoda pulled them out with a hand that was wet and trembling, and sat down on the nearest chair, sick at heart and cold with a strange, new fear. CHAPTER IX. RHODA’S WATCHFULNESS There could no longer be any question that the theft of the snuff-boxes was deliberate, and moreover that it had been most carefully planned and cleverly carried out. Who then was the thief? Half ashamed of herself for her suspicions, Rhoda yet could not but feel that they all pointed in the same direction. And she shuddered at the thought that this plot had been made against herself, and that it was not robbery but slander which was the object of the thief. Not one of the younger servants could possibly know anything about the duplicate keys; while the older ones were all incapable, whatever their knowledge might be, of using it against her or against their master. Only one person besides Sir Robert himself was aware that she had a set of keys for the gallery, a large one to open the door, and smaller ones to open the cases and chests. Only one person, she argued, would have had either the artfulness to conceive the robbery, or the nerve to carry it out. Daring as her suspicion could not fail to seem, even to herself, Rhoda at once decided that the theft was the work of Lady Sarah, of whose secret animosity she was well assured. And that its object was to discredit Rhoda by bringing upon her the suspicion of theft seemed to her, at first, equally certain. What other explanation, indeed, could there be for such an act on the part of the over-indulged wife of a rich man? Rhoda did not know all that had passed, since Lady Sarah’s return, between the baronet and his wife, and it did not occur to her that Lady Sarah could possibly be pressed for money. As for the ruinous extravagance of the beauty, of which Lady Eridge had spoken, however much she might wish to spend she appeared to have enough to gratify every wish and every whim.