You are a hateful person," she said deliberately, "a hateful,
interfering person. I detest you."

"I think that we will go down now," he replied.

He raised the trap-door and glanced at her significantly. She held her
skirts closely together and passed through it without looking at him.
She stepped lightly down the ladder and without hesitation descended
also a flight of uncarpeted attic stairs. Here, however, upon the
landing, she awaited him with obvious reluctance.

"Are you going to send for the police?" she asked without looking at
him.

"No," he answered.

"Why not?"

"If I had meant to give you away I should have told Mrs. Fitzgerald at
once that I had seen you take her bracelet, instead of following you out
on to the roof."

"Do you mind telling me what you do propose to do, then?" she continued
still without looking at him, still without the slightest note of appeal
in her tone.

He withdrew the bracelet from his pocket and balanced it upon his
finger.

"I am going to say that I took it for a joke," he declared.

She hesitated.

"Mrs. Fitzgerald's sense of humor is not elastic," she warned him.

"She will be very angry, of course," he assented, "but she will not
believe that I meant to steal it."

The girl moved slowly a few steps away.

"I suppose that I ought to thank you," she said, still with averted
face and sullen manner. "You have really been very decent. I am much
obliged."

"Are you not coming down?" he asked.

"Not at present," she answered. "I am going to my room."

He looked around the landing on which they stood, at the miserable,
uncarpeted floor, the ill-painted doors on which the long-forgotten
varnish stood out in blisters, the jumble of dilapidated hot-water cans,
a mop, and a medley of brooms and rags all thrown down together in a
corner.

"But these are the servants' quarters, surely," he remarked.

"They are good enough for me; my room is here," she told him, turning
the handle of one of the doors and disappearing. The prompt turning of
the key sounded, he thought, a little ungracious.

With the bracelet in his hand, Tavernake descended three more flights
of stairs and entered the drawing-room of the private hotel conducted
by Mrs. Raithby Lawrence, whose husband, one learned from her frequent
reiteration of the fact, had once occupied a distinguished post in the
Merchant Service of his country. The disturbance following upon the
disappearance of the bracelet was