I can't," she said. "I'm afraid I can't spare it. I
only brought as much as I should want to get me back home again."

There was a minute's unbroken silence. Gussie's smile, always so
pronounced, spread across his gums till his face looked as if it were
cut in two.

"I can let you have half a sovereign," Aunty suggested.

"Oh, thank you; it's of no consequence," Gussie said, making a gesture
of refusal. He walked about the room as if hurriedly seeking for
something he never found.

Auntie, with her unintelligent gaze divided between his movements and
the glove which so reluctantly covered her arm, offered a tardy
explanation.

"I never lend money," she said. "It was my father's dying request that
I never should. I owe it to him to regard it."

"Quite so; of course," Gussie said. "The matter just came into my head.
I merely mentioned it. Pray don't give it a thought."

As they drove to the theatre, Auntie remarked that she should insist on
paying for her ticket and her share of the cab, a suggestion at which
Gussie and Grace were hospitably offended. She asked, then, if the
house was safe, left with only the maid-servants to protect it. In
order to reassure her, Augustus informed her that he was intending to
go home once in the course of the evening to make sure that things were
all right.

"Not that it matters to me," Auntie told him; "for I have brought my
valuables with me--jewellery and money, too. I always take them with
me, in strange places. I could never enjoy the play if my mind were not
at rest. I wear a bag concealed in the skirt of my dress on purpose."

"Ah! I wish I could make Grace as thoughtful!" Gussie said.

"Give me Auntie's money and jewels, then see!" Grace cried.

"And I suppose you go to bed with them, too?" Gussie admiringly
inquired. "Grace has never so much as carried up the plate-basket."

He was quite right. Auntie did go to bed with them, always putting the
bag containing them under her pillow.

"A wise precaution!" said Gussie.

"I'm a heavy sleeper," Auntie explained. "A robber might break in and
take my property, and I never hear him; but let him touch the pillow
beneath my head, and I'm wide awake on the moment."

"Yes, but--" said Augustus Mellish, and smiled, "a few drops of
chloroform on a handkerchief held over your face, Auntie, and where
would you and your jewellery be then?"

They were at the theatre, by that time, and Auntie did not answer. But
when she went to