In spite of the strength of her suspicions, it was strange that Rhoda’s interest in Lady Sarah grew stronger from that evening when she became fairly certain in her own mind that the lady had appropriated the snuff-boxes from her husband’s collection. Torn by doubts as to what the meaning of the theft could be, since Lady Sarah seemed to be plentifully supplied with money, on the one hand, and since she seemed to have no intention of getting Rhoda into disgrace, upon the other, Rhoda scarcely wavered in her belief. She could not, certainly, have offered any very sound reasons for it; but with the illogical springing to an opinion which so often serves with a woman as well as strong reasoning powers, she caught and held fast to the idea that Lady Sarah had stolen the snuff-boxes, and moreover, that Jack Rotherfield knew all about it. In spite of this belief, however, Rhoda felt that she had more sympathy with Sir Robert’s erratic wife after that night than she had had before. The few moments’ talk they had had together had opened her eyes to the fact that, if Sir Robert was disappointed in the woman who had inspired such a passion within him, she, on her side, was by nature unfitted to find much happiness or even contentment in his society. Her husband bored her. There was something in the mellow tones of his voice that irritated and depressed her, something in his sedate manner that seemed to her ridiculous when it was not deadening. For while he had married her under the influence of passion, she, on her side, had been under the influence of no such idealising feeling. On the one hand, he was the more to be pitied, in that he had married her under the spell of an illusion. On the other, she had been practically forced by circumstances to give her hand to a man who, whatever her respect for him might be, could not, in the nature of things, be expected to realise her girlish ideal. Rhoda was very unhappy. No further allusion was made by Sir Robert to his loss, and she helped him as before. But they could not help feeling conscious of that unfortunate incident, and worrying their heads about it, while Lady Sarah was always making new suggestions as to traps and plots for the discovery of the dishonest person, to none of which the good-natured baronet would agree. On the third day after the loss they all got something fresh to occupy themselves with, in the return home of Minnie Mallory and her brother George, who had got an extension of his vacation on the plea of ill-health: he having had a slight attack of what he said was influenza, of which he had made the most. They were much amused to hear who Rhoda was, having retained a dim remembrance of the tall pale girl with the lank hair who had told George that listening at keyholes was ungentlemanly.