discern her nowhere. Presently he made inquiries, to be told that
she had desired her carriage to be called, and had left York
House immediately upon coming in from the garden.

He concluded that she was gone off in a pet. It was very odd. It
was, in fact, most flagrantly contradictory that she should have
taken offense at that which she had so obviously invited. But
then she always had been a perverse and provoking jade. With that
reflection he put her from his mind.

But anon, when his guests had departed, and the lights in the
great house were extinguished, Buckingham thought of the incident
again. Cogitating it, he sat in his room, his fingers combing his
fine, pointed, auburn beard. At last, with a shrug and a half-
laugh, he rose to undress for bed. And then a cry escaped him,
and brought in his valet from an adjoining room. The riband of
diamond studs was gone.

Reckless and indifferent as he was, a sense of evil took him in
the moment of his discovery of that loss, so that he stood there
pale, staring, and moist of brow. It was no ordinary theft. There
were upon his person a dozen ornaments of greater value, any one
of which could have been more easily detached. This was the work
of some French agent. He had made no secret of whence those studs
had come to him.

There his thoughts checked on a sudden. As in a flash of
revelation, he saw the meaning of Lady Carlisle's oddly
contradictory behaviour. The jade had fooled him. It was she who
had stolen the riband. He sat down again, his head in his hands,