But the spoilt beauty was already at the door. Looking back over her shoulder, and laughing mischievously, she said, quite in her old, buoyant, happy manner: “Snuff-boxes! Oh, dear, I know nothing about those! If he suspects, he’ll have to make his own discoveries. One surprise is enough for him at a time!” And the next moment she had flitted out of the room, lightly tripping along, relieved from all care herself, but leaving Rhoda oppressed by a strong sense that she had not made the most of her opportunity. She felt that she ought to have been more exacting, that she should have made more stringent conditions, that she ought perhaps even to have gone the length of insisting that she should accompany Lady Sarah on her errand to Sir Robert. But it was too late for regrets, too late for anything but unwilling acquiescence in the bold plan which the wilful lady had conceived, for giving up the stolen Romney. But Rhoda wondered, as she slowly went out of the boudoir, and to Caryl’s room, where the boy was waiting for her, what story it was that Lady Sarah would end by telling her husband? Would she go as near the truth as she had promised to do? Would she confess to having been one of the conspirators, and to Jack Rotherfield’s having been the other? And would she say, as she proposed, that the whole affair was nothing more than a practical joke? If she did, would not even the gentle, unsuspicious Sir Robert turn round upon her with a question about the stolen snuff-boxes? By no stretch of imagination could he be induced to believe, if once he were told that Lady Sarah and Jack were engaged in the robbery of the picture, that they were innocent of the other theft. More and more slowly Rhoda walked, as she told herself, with a little shudder, that she could not trust Lady Sarah, and that the story she was telling her husband, whatever it be, would not implicate either herself or Jack Rotherfield. CHAPTER XII. LADY SARAH’S DUPLICITY If Rhoda could have followed Lady Sarah into the study, she would have discovered that her suspicions and forebodings were amply justified. Sir Robert was deep in his studies when she entered like a whirlwind, with bright eyes and voluble tongue, bearing in her arms a roll in which the baronet altogether failed to recognise his lost picture. “Bertie, Bertie, look here, I’ve news, good news for you!” she cried with excitement, as she dashed across the floor and plunged her burden into the midst of his letters and papers, his books and his writing materials. “Good gracious, my dear, what is it?” She sprang up, clapped her hands, nodded her head, and beamed upon him. “See for yourself,” said she.