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The next day was to bring news of a startling kind to the Hall. Juliet was spending a lazy morning feeding the waterfowl on the lake, and making believe to read Red Cotton Nightcap Country, when a message was brought to her that Lord Culvers wished to see her in his study at once. She went back to find her father waiting at the hall-door for her with an open letter in his hand, and a look on his face which said “something to tell” plainly as words could.

“News of Ida’s brooch,” he said, so soon as her feet were inside the door. Then he led the way into his study, spread the letter before her, and bade her read it.

It came under cover from Messrs. Hunt and Locke, of Chancery Lane. The writer was an English priest⁠—Baldwin by name⁠—who officiated at the church of the Carmelite Friars, in the Rue Bellarmine, Paris, He stated that on the previous Sunday at the midday celebration of mass a diamond brooch, answering in all respects to the one described in the advertisement in the daily papers, had been dropped into the offertory bag. By whom⁠—whether by a penitent as an offering, or by a thief in order to escape detection⁠—he could not say. The church was crowded at the time, and the brother who had collected the alms had not noticed anything unusual in the manner of giving in any part of the church.

The writer concluded by giving his address in the Rue Bellarmine, and stating that the brooch was in his possession awaiting identification from its owner.

Juliet’s face grew as white as her father’s as she read the letter.

“Oh, father, what does it mean⁠—what can it mean?” she cried, in a quaking voice, as she read the last word. “Ida has not dropped that brooch into the bag, why should she?”

Her thoughts flew to the worst.

“Can something terrible have happened to her, and some thief have⁠—Oh, no, no, it cannot be!” And then she broke down utterly, and sank into a chair, covering her face with her hands.

Lord Culvers, though scarcely less agitated, did his best to calm her.

“Now, now, Juliet,” he said, tremulously, “if you give way like this you’ll unnerve me and make me unfit for what I’ve got to do.”

Neither of his daughters were of the weeping, hysteric order; tears with them, after childish days were past, were of rare occurrence; when they did break down it meant something more than a headache or an attack of nerves, and carried weight accordingly.

For one thing, her outburst of grief entirely dispelled from his mind any lingering suspicion that she was in some way cognizant of her sister’s movements.

Juliet calmed herself with difficulty.

“What have you done? What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Well, my dear, you see I must start for Paris at once, in order to identify the brooch. I’ve already ordered the carriage, and if I catch the next train from here I shall save the night boat, and⁠—”

“It may not be Ida’s brooch after all,” interrupted Juliet, eagerly.

“Exactly, my dear,” said Lord Culvers, almost cheerfully, and glad to have a chance of putting a bright face on matters. “Before we allow ourselves to imagine that the worst⁠—the very worst has happened, we must make sure that the brooch is Ida’s. I’ve telegraphed to Sefton, and⁠—”

“Oh, why not have telegraphed to Clive? he has a thousand times more energy!” again interrupted the girl, feeling instinctively that the one man was as a rock and the other but as a reed to depend upon.

“Now, now, my dear,” answered her father, deprecatingly, “Ida’s husband is the right person to act as my coadjutor in this matter. But will you come with me?⁠—that is, if you can get ready in five minutes⁠—I shall be glad to have you.”

Juliet thought for a moment.

“No,” she answered, slowly, “I must stay here for the present. I may have to follow you, I cannot tell.”

“Well, well,” answered Lord Culvers, a little puzzled, “it doesn’t matter much. I take it no one can identify this brooch but me; there’s a flaw in one of the emeralds in the spray that will enable me to swear to it, and⁠—”

“But, father,” interrupted Juliet, “you won’t try to hush the matter up any longer, will you? You must⁠—you will apply to the police now. We must move heaven and earth to end this suspense.”

“Yes, yes, of course; that is, provided the brooch is really Ida’s,” he answered, clinging desperately to the last shred of hope that there might yet be a possibility of avoiding the publicity which calling in the assistance of the police would involve. “You see,” he added, reprovingly, “you are taking the worst possible view of things. Ida herself may be in Paris⁠—Heaven only knows where she is⁠—and may have read the advertisement for her brooch; and, fearing lest it may draw attention to herself, may have⁠—”

“What!” interrupted Juliet, “you think Ida capable of giving away mother’s brooch in that fashion!”

“My dear,” said Lord Culvers, with a sigh, “Heaven only knows what you are both capable of. I could never find where to draw the line.”

And then the carriage was announced, and Juliet, all nervous terror for fear her father should miss his train, and so lose the night steamer, did her best to control her agitation, and to expedite his departure.

Lord Culvers had a characteristic farewell speech to make to his wife and daughter as they stood saying their goodbyes to him under the porch. It was:

“You two won’t quarrel more than you can help while I’m away, now will you?”

Lady Culvers’s reply was characteristic also. It was:

“Dear love, if Juliet is ever so trying, I shall put up with it all for your sake.”

And Juliet’s reply was also characteristic:

“Quarrel with Peggy⁠—at such a time!” she exclaimed. “I should as soon think of quarrelling with the flies on the ceiling!”

So soon as her father was out of sight, without even calling her stepmother into council, she despatched a telegram to Clive, telling him of the finding of the brooch, and asking him to meet her father in Paris on the following day. She felt quite equal to doing this on her own responsibility. It was all very well for her father to preach deference to the proprieties of life, and select Sefton as a suitable coadjutor; she felt that the proprieties of life had already had too much deference paid to them, and that it was time now to make all considerations bend to their one pressing necessity of ending a terrible suspense.

After she had despatched her telegram, she went wandering out into the garden, and thence into the park beyond; her mind capable of holding one thought, and one thought only: “Ida, Ida, where is she?”

At every turn of her footsteps a shadowy Ida seemed to meet and confront her. There, a cool patch of green in the afternoon sun, lay the tennis-court where she and Ida had had such glorious combats, and where, if she closed her eyes for a minute, she could see her in her white tennis-dress, tossing, in semi-contemptuous fashion, her ball of banknotes to the willing recipient. There, on the margin of the lake, which glistened like silver between the shifting boughs of the intervening trees, stood the drooping willow that had been their “wishing willow” from the days of short frocks and strapped shoes upwards. There, too, in an out-of-the-way corner of the garden, lay the little flowerbeds they had delighted to call their own in their days of mischief and mud-pies, and which the gardener had carefully “set to rights” every evening, and their tricksy fingers had as carefully “set to wrongs” the next morning. Why, the very birds as they piped and twittered in and out among the shrubberies seemed to sound Ida’s name in her ears as they recalled the long, happy, lazy mornings they two had spent under the shadow of the big flowering rhododendrons, embroidery in hand, listening to the sweet, wild notes.

“Oh, it is too much, too much!” exclaimed the girl, covering her ears with her hands as if to shut out a chorus of voices that cried aloud to her. “All that is past and gone forever. Ida, Ida, where is she now!”

She went hurriedly back to the house and straight to her own room, where she shut herself in with her pen and ink.

The sun went down, the dinner-bell clanged through the house, the moon rose high above the oaks and elms in the park, but still Juliet sat writing there, slowly, carefully, painfully, as if each word she wrote held a life’s sentence in it.

And if one had looked over her shoulder he would have seen that her letter was addressed to Clive, and that from its first to its last line it was about Ida, and Ida only.