CHAPTER IX.

RHODA’S WATCHFULNESS

There could no longer be any question that the theft of the snuff-boxes was deliberate, and moreover that it had been most carefully planned and cleverly carried out.

Who then was the thief?

Half ashamed of herself for her suspicions, Rhoda yet could not but feel that they all pointed in the same direction. And she shuddered at the thought that this plot had been made against herself, and that it was not robbery but slander which was the object of the thief.

Not one of the younger servants could possibly know anything about the duplicate keys; while the older ones were all incapable, whatever their knowledge might be, of using it against her or against their master.

Only one person besides Sir Robert himself was aware that she had a set of keys for the gallery, a large one to open the door, and smaller ones to open the cases and chests.

Only one person, she argued, would have had either the artfulness to conceive the robbery, or the nerve to carry it out.

Daring as her suspicion could not fail to seem, even to herself, Rhoda at once decided that the theft was the work of Lady Sarah, of whose secret animosity she was well assured.

And that its object was to discredit Rhoda by bringing upon her the suspicion of theft seemed to her, at first, equally certain.

What other explanation, indeed, could there be for such an act on the part of the over-indulged wife of a rich man? Rhoda did not know all that had passed, since Lady Sarah’s return, between the baronet and his wife, and it did not occur to her that Lady Sarah could possibly be pressed for money. As for the ruinous extravagance of the beauty, of which Lady Eridge had spoken, however much she might wish to spend she appeared to have enough to gratify every wish and every whim.

Rhoda did not doubt that the next stage in the affair would be a gradual coolness on Sir Robert’s part towards herself, and that soon she would learn, more or less explicitly, that her honesty was under suspicion.

In the meantime she dared not breathe a word of her own doubts to any one, but could only wait to be attacked.

What should she do in the meantime? To ask permission to go away would be to bring fresh odium upon herself, while to remain would expose her to the possibility of more suspicion.

Not unnaturally, poor Rhoda found, when the gong sounded for dinner, that her eyes were red, her face was swollen, and she was emphatically what women call “not fit to be seen.” However, there was no help for it. Downstairs she had to go, to endure as best she might the covert looks of Lady Sarah, and, of course, of Mr. Rotherfield, who, she did not doubt, would be in the secret of her discomfiture.

Nothing was said about her altered looks; Sir Robert gave her a kind and reassuring smile, from which she augured, with a ray of comfort, that he had not yet been induced to doubt her. But Lady Sarah and Jack Rotherfield did not appear to notice the change in her appearance, and, although the master of the house was not so lively as he usually was in the society of his late ward, his wife and Jack kept the conversation alive during dinner.

Rhoda would have escaped upstairs at once on leaving the dining-room, but Lady Sarah detained her, saying that they wanted her to play and sing for them again.

“Won’t you excuse me to-night, Lady Sarah? Really, I’m not at all well,” said Rhoda.

Lady Sarah pulled her down the stairs peremtorily.

“Nonsense,” whispered she. “I know all about it. I know what’s the matter. Only of course I couldn’t allude to it before the servants. Come into the drawing-room and let us talk it over.”

Trembling and reluctant, but unable to resist the wilful beauty, even though she hated her for her dissimilation and her treachery, Rhoda had to consent to a _tête-à-tête_ which she would have given the world to avoid.

In to the brightly lighted apartment, therefore, which could scarcely be recognised as the old drawing-room where the unhappy Langton had met his death, Rhoda was dragged. Lady Sarah threw her down into the deep-seated settee near the fireplace, and pulling across the floor a high round stool, she seated herself upon it, embraced her knees like a child, and nodded gravely at the girl two or three times.

“Yes, I know all about it,” she said. “Sir Robert told me. Some wretch has stolen three or four of Sir Robert’s patch-boxes, and you and he thinks that your keys or his must have been got at. It’s very unpleasant and uncomfortable, and I’m sorry for your sake. But not so much for any other. It will be a lesson to Sir Robert not to waste so much money as he does on things that he could enjoy just as well in a museum, and which can never be made quite safe in a private house.”

Rhoda stared at her stupidly.

If Lady Sarah’s expressed opinion was not genuine, it was an excellent piece of acting. She was frank, sympathetic, kindly, and not in the least inclined to exaggerate the importance of the loss, or to impute blame to Rhoda.

“It’s--it’s a dreadful thing for me,” stammered Rhoda, without quite knowing whether she was or was not ashamed of her own suspicions.

“Why? You surely don’t suppose we think it was your fault? As Sir Robert himself says, it is just as likely that his keys were used as that yours were.”

Rhoda shook her head.

“They were taken out of my pocket--and put back again,” she said shortly. “They were missing when I first came back from the Priory, and they were restored during the time I was talking to Sir Robert about it.”

“Then they were taken by some one who must have watched you go in and out of your room?”

“Yes.”

“Does Sir Robert know that?”

“Not yet. I only found the keys replaced ten minutes before I came down to dinner.”

“He will be in here within a few minutes now, and we will consult together about laying a trap for the thief.”

Rhoda said nothing. She was confused, her head seemed to be spinning. There was no hint of any accusation in Lady Sarah’s manner, nothing but sympathetic regret for the girl’s own sake in her voice and manner.

But yet Rhoda did not trust her, did not even now really doubt that her first impression was the correct one. She looked at the fire, and turning suddenly, caught an expression in Lady Sarah’s eyes which was not at all benevolent.

And she was completely reinstated in her first opinion. It was Lady Sarah, and no other, who, for what motive she did not yet know, had lain in wait for an opportunity of obtaining the keys, had obtained the possession of the three snuff-boxes, and who had then found means of replacing the keys in the pocket while she knew Rhoda to be downstairs.

“Well, it won’t happen again,” said Rhoda drily. “I am going to give back my keys to Sir Robert this evening, and I will never take charge of them again.”

“He won’t let you give them up.”

“He will have no choice,” said Rhoda, with decision.

“How obstinate you are,” complained Lady Sarah petulantly.

“I don’t think any one would act differently in my position,” said Rhoda.

“Then he is to lose your help, after having learnt to depend upon it?”

Rhoda, with a flush in her cheeks, and speaking in a trembling voice, rushed nervously at the opportunity thus presented:

“Well, why don’t you give him the help he wants yourself? It’s easy enough, and think how grateful he would be to you! When he prizes every word and look from you, it would make him so happy if you only would interest yourself in his collection. Do this, take care of his keys yourself, and whatever you don’t care to do, in the way of cataloguing and deciphering notes, and all that, give to me yourself, and let me do it for you instead of for him.”

Rhoda spoke earnestly, almost passionately; and Lady Sarah, who had begun by laughing a little at her proposition, listened to the end of her speech with an unusually grave face.

There was a short pause when Rhoda had finished; then the volatile lady recovered her spirits.

“I wish I could,” she said, with a pretty little shrug. “Believe me, I only wish I had been ‘built that way,’ and that I could play Joan to Sir Robert’s Darby in the proper manner. But I really couldn’t, you know. I might play at it for a week, but I couldn’t keep it up. We don’t like the same things, and it would be foolish of me to pretend to, because he’d find me out. Just think what a hash I should make of it if I were to attempt to criticise his Romney and his two Gainsboroughs, his Fra Angelico and his old engravings! To me they seem all dull and old-fashioned and over-rated altogether. I pretend sometimes to see their beauties, but it’s only pretence, and it bores me to pretend. Don’t you see?”

Rhoda was interested. If Lady Sarah had been acting before, she was obviously sincere now, and the girl felt for a moment rather sorry for the young married woman.

“Well, can’t you teach him to be interested in the things that interest you?” she hazarded.

She was surprised at her own boldness; but there was something more human, less artificial than usual in Lady Sarah’s manner that evening, which encouraged her to speak out. It was better to get right to the bottom of this human soul, if she could, now that she seemed to have the opportunity.

Lady Sarah shook her pretty head.

“Oh, dear no. When you lecture me----”

“Oh, no, I didn’t!” interpolated Rhoda, shocked.

“Yes, you did. I repeat, when you lecture me, you do it without understanding the position. Every one is sorry for Sir Robert, the grave, kind-hearted man married to a flighty little woman who doesn’t care about old masters or cracked teapots. But nobody takes the trouble to remember that there’s another side to the question, and that the flighty little woman is to be pitied too!”

“Yes, I see,” admitted Rhoda.

“It may be much more dignified, and a sign of a higher nature, and all that to prefer looking at pictures to dancing and motoring. But if one can’t help oneself, what is one to do? And it would, of course, be just as impossible to make Sir Robert take to waltzing and to interest him in polo and fox-hunting, as it would to make a bookworm and a blue-stocking of a poor ignoramus like me.”

Rhoda could not help smiling sympathetically. This was the truth for once. Lady Sarah was, for the moment at least, genuinely sorry for herself, and she made Rhoda sorry too.

“But you know what he was like in the first place,” objected she timidly.

“Well, and he knew what I was like. And I can’t suppose that he ever expected me to fall down and worship his Bartolozzis, or to go crazy over his old blue china. As for me, to do me justice, I never pretended that I could. So of what use would it be for me to try to do what isn’t natural to me? Isn’t it better that he should follow his bent, and I mine, when neither of us does anything wrong or mischievous, after all?”

“It seems a pity,” ventured Rhoda. “Forgive me for saying so, but you wouldn’t have to pretend much to be interested in what interests him.”

“Yes, I should. Luckily, we have some pleasures in common. We like the same people. We have both taken a fancy to you, and we are both fond of his late ward, Jack. And we both adore Caryl. Why shouldn’t we be content with the sympathies that we have, and not try to manufacture others?”

It was all very cleverly put, Rhoda thought, but she was not convinced. Perhaps Lady Sarah, frank as she seemed, did not expect her to be. At any rate, she suddenly sprang up from her stool, as if tired of the discussion, and flitting across to the piano, seated herself at it, and played a two-step with vigour that caused it to reach the ears of the gentlemen, whom it effectually brought out of the dining-room.

The talk at once turned again to the subject of the stolen snuff-boxes. Rhoda told Sir Robert of her discovery of the keys, was sure that they had been replaced in the pocket of her dress during her short absence to speak to him in the study, and insisted on returning them to him, declining to have the custody of them for the future.

It was in vain that the baronet protested, that Lady Sarah coaxed, that Jack said she should keep them and lay traps to catch the thief on a later occasion. Nothing would move her from her purpose, and Sir Robert had, with great reluctance, to accept the keys from her.

They all had theories to suggest, Jack being loud in support of the suggestion that the theft was the work of one of the men-servants, and Sir Robert being of opinion that it was the work of a woman. For, he said, no suspicion would be excited by the sight of one of the maids coming out of or going into a bedroom, while if a man-servant were to be caught in the neighbourhood of the rooms where he had no business, suspicion would be directed to him at once.

The conversation was animated, every one taking a fair share with the exception of Rhoda, whose attitude was rather that of a listener than of a talker.

And she was rewarded for her watchfulness by catching a look exchanged between Lady Sarah and Jack Rotherfield, a look after which her old suspicions returned in full force.

For in it she saw that there was a perfect understanding between these two over the theft, and that each seemed to be congratulating the other upon a lucky escape.