her.

"You may go now, Mrs. Redmain," said her husband when Mary entered.
"Get out, Mewks," he added; and both lady and valet disappeared.

"So!" he said, with a grin of pleasure. "Here's a pretty business! You
may sit down, though. You haven't got the ring in that bag there?"

"Nor anywhere else, sir," answered Mary. "Shall I shake it out on the
floor?--or on the sofa would be better."

"Nonsense! You don't imagine me such a fool as to suppose, if you had
it, you would carry it about in your bag!"

"You don't believe I have it, sir--do you?" she returned, in a tone of
appeal.

"How am I to know what to believe? There is something dubious about
you--you have yourself all but admitted that: how am I to know that
robbery mayn't be your little dodge? All that rubbish you talked down
at Lychford about honesty, and taking no wages, and loving your
mistress, and all that rot, looks devilish like something off the
square! That ring, now, the stone of it alone, is worth seven hundred
pounds: one might let pretty good wages go for a chance like that!"

Mary looked him in the face, and made him no answer. He spied a danger:
if he irritated her, he would get nothing out of her!

"My girl," he said, changing his tone, "I believe you know nothing
about the ring; I was only teasing you."

Mary could not help a sigh of relief, and her eyes fell, for she felt
them beginning to fill. She could not have believed that the judgment
of such a man would ever be of consequence to her. But the unity of the
race is a thing that can not be broken.

Now, although Mr. Redmain was by no means so sure of her innocence as
he had pretended, he did at least wish and hope to find her
innocent--from no regard for her, but because there was another he
would be more glad to find concerned in the ugly affair.

"Mrs. Redmain," he went on, "would have me hand you over to the police;
but I won't. You may go home when you please, and you need fear
nothing."

He had the house where the Helmers lodged already watched, and knew
this much, that some one was ill there, and that the doctor came almost
every day.

"I certainly shall fear nothing," said Mary, not quite trusting him;
"my fate is in God's hands."

"We know all about that," said Mr. Redmain; "I'm up to most dodges. But
look here, my girl: it wouldn't be prudent in me, lest there should be
such a personage as you have just mentioned, to be hard upon any of my
fellow-creatures: I am one da