Anthony found this question almost as embarrassing as the first one. He could not share his impressions. They were mingled--that the girl was beautiful--that swimming was a sensuous and graceful motion--that wet garments clinging to lovely limbs had not been sculptured since the Greeks made statuettes--that absolute integrity is consistent with masquerading under another name than your own and stealing someone else's references. But, alas, these convictions were as impossible to share as a religious revelation. He turned for help to the most ancient methods. "And what do you think of her, Cora?" he said, as if he really cared. "I wrote you what I thought," said Cora, and went into it again, while he sat smoking and trying to remember whether or not he had ever read that letter of Cora's with the long description of moonlight on the sea. He rather thought he hadn't. "Ah," said Edna, willing to do Cora a kindness, "so you and Anthony correspond, do you?" At which Cora laughed self-consciously, and Anthony looked like a graven image--his well-known method of concealing emotion. This time the emotion was simply irritation, but Edna said to herself, "Well, after all, she wouldn't be so bad." In the short pause that followed, Durland bounded suddenly into the room. His eyes, which were normally blue like his mother's, looked almost white in the sudden lights of the room. They were very wide open, and his small face was pale under his freckles and set with anger. "Look here, Uncle Anthony," he said, "did you know what is going on in our house? Did you know they suspected Miss Exeter of stealing mother's pearls?" No one answered, and he continued, his voice shaking a little: "She asked me to give a letter she had been writing to the man who comes with the evening mail, and as I did Albertson came out and tried to take it from me--but that was a little too much." The letter was still in his hand, crumpled from the struggle. "I never heard of such a thing! It's an outrage! Did you know of this, mother?" There was something menacing in his tone. "My dear boy," said Edna, in that patronizing tone that people use as if their ability to conceal something from a child were a tremendous proof of their own superiority. "I'm afraid it will be a great shock to you, but you must face the fact that she did steal my pearls--at least so we believe; and that she is not Miss Exeter at all--she is a notorious English jewel thief known by the agreeable sobriquet of Golden Moll." "You don't know that, Edna," said her brother quickly. "I should say not!" cried Durland. "Mother, I think it's perfectly rotten of you to think it's even possible." Edna turned to her brother. "You see, Anthony," she said, "what you've done to me, introducing this woman into my house--turning my own children against me." Cora smiled at the boy soothingly.