s, and
it'd stay there, with the ripple stirring above it. Anybody would have
loved his voice....

"But! Bless my soul alive!" she broke off into her loud, jovial,
everyday tone again. "About time I left off maunderin' about
when--other--lips, and threw some glad-rags on to me natural history!
I'll wear the marmalade-coloured affair with the dangles.... Well!
'Marry the man you fancy,' as it says in the song, and don't let me go
puttin' you off any of 'em, Miss Smith----"

But whether the Star did "put me off" by her reminiscences of her trick
cyclist with the charming, reluctant voice, or whether it is that I've
slowly been coming round to the conclusion subconsciously in my own
mind, I find that, however estimable he may be, I shall never be able to
marry Mr. Reginald Brace.

No! Not if I have to go on being Miss Million's or somebody else's
lady's-maid until I'm old and grey.

I somehow realised that with the first moment that I opened the door to
the tall, mackintoshed figure--it was raining again, of course,
outside--Miss Million, very pretty and flushed and eager in her
rose-pink tea-gown, followed close upon my heels as I let Mr. Brace in,
and behind her came Miss Vi Vassity, sumptuous in the orange satin that
she calls "the marmalade-coloured affair."

And all three of us, without even bidding the young bank manager "Good
evening," chorused together: "Tell us, for goodness' sake, tell us at
once! Who did steal the Rattenheimer ruby?"

"Nobody!" replied Mr. Reginald Brace, in his pleasant but rather precise
voice, and with his steady grey eyes fixed on me as I, in my inevitable
cap and apron, waited to take his coat.

We all gasped "Nobody? What----Why----"

"The Rattenheimer ruby has not been stolen at all," replied Mr. Reginald
Brace, smiling encouragingly upon us.

And then, while we all gaped and gazed upon him, and kept the poor
wretched man waiting for his dinner, he went on to tell us the full
history of the celebrated ruby.

It appears that an exquisite paste copy has been made of the priceless
pendant, which the German-Jewish owners have kept by them to delude
possible jewel thieves.

And now it is they themselves who have been deluded by the same
wonderful replica of the celebrated gem!

For Mrs. Rattenheimer, it appears, imagined that it was the replica that
reposed in her jewel-case, from which the original was missing after
that fatal ten minutes of carelessness during which she left