liabilities. Besides those I knew of, she owed two or three hundreds to
a money-lender, to whom she had gone in a panic on first discovering she
was in debt. He had lent her the money, at an enormous rate of interest,
and as she had been unable to pay anything he was now pressing for
immediate payment. Distracted by his threats, and by the other bills
which her extravagance had run up, too terrified to appeal to me after
her solemn promises, Eva conceived a really desperate plan. Taking
advantage of my absence she went to Jordan and Green, the jewellers, and
asked if she might have a very fine pearl necklace on approval. They
demurred a little, politely, at first, and asked her name, whereon she
gave it, without hesitation, as Lady Eileen Greenlay, an Irish girl with
whom she had been acquainted in Dublin, and to whom she bore a striking
resemblance. She gave them Lady Eileen's address in Hamilton Terrace,
and one of the clerks, who knew the lady by sight, advised the head of
the firm that this was really she. Of course they knew the family were
wealthy people, and as Eva was beautifully dressed, with furs--unpaid
for--worth two hundred pounds, they let her have the necklace, and off
she went with it."

"But how risky!" Toni breathed the word in horror.

"A desperate woman sticks at very little," Herrick reminded her grimly.
"Well, the misguided girl took her trophy and went off to Rockborough,
the big pawnbroker, where she displayed the necklace and asked for a
loan. Seeing no reason to doubt her genuineness, they advanced her a
large sum--though not, of course, the full value of the jewels, and she
took the money and paid the money-lender and one or two more people who
were pressing her. But it happened by a queer coincidence that a day or
two later Jordan and Green had a visit from an aunt of the real Lady
Eileen's, who wished to send her a little diamond pendant for a birthday
present; and when she gave the address to which it was to be sent as one
of the best hotels in Mentone, the jewellers became uneasy. They
instituted inquiries, found the young lady's family were all out of
town, the Hamilton Terrace house closed; and it became pretty evident
they had been hoaxed."

He paused; but Toni did not speak.

"The first thing they did was to make inquiries at the big pawnbrokers,
and of course they knew in an hour or two that they had been done. With
a queer sort of cleverness, Eva had given herself out, to the se