im. I was mighty keen to see what Mrs. Sands would be like. I
suppose to see what style of woman he'd worship enough to pick up from
the gutter."

"Goodness me, child!" broke in Mrs. Blackburne, absorbed. "You don't
mean that's where she came from? I never heard----"

"No--no! I oughtn't to have used that expression," Ellen confessed,
"though they tell all sorts of stories about her origin. I daresay none
of 'em are right, and not a soul knows the truth. People have given her
a nickname: 'the girl from nowhere.' But you've only to see her to
realize at once that whatever she was, she must have been brought up
like a princess."

"Handsome?"

"A dream of beauty. She's worthy of her husband that way, but she's not
in other ways. That's my excuse."

"Your excuse, lovey? For what?"

"For what I did. But you won't know why I did it, or forgive me for
doing it, unless I tell you the story as I understand it."

"Go right on, dear, and take your time. I won't interrupt again." So
Ellen gave her mother a succinct account of all that had befallen her,
until the fateful moment when she discovered that the pearls were not in
their case.

"The case empty! The pearls gone! My goodness me!" gasped the old lady.

"I never had such a scare in my life. Mrs. Sands had told me how she'd
been dressing in her bedroom, with the door wide open into the boudoir,
because the pearls were there, all ready for me to begin on, if I
arrived before she'd got into her gown. She either believed the pearls
were in the case, or else she wanted me to believe she believed it! The
desperate state she was in, under her pretty manner, made me think maybe
she was playing some dreadful trick, and after I'd got over the first
shock of surprise I was mad with that woman. 'She doesn't care if she
ruins me, so she can save herself from a scrape,' was what I thought
about her. I made up my mind I wouldn't be catspaw, to pull her
chestnuts out of the fire."

"What did you do?" breathed Mrs. Blackburne, sitting straight up in bed.

"I rang the bell for the butler. He came to the door in an instant. I
told him to call Mrs. Sands at once, it was urgent. I thought that would
fetch her, but it didn't. It was the man who came back. He seemed a bit
embarrassed: Mrs. Sands was very busy at the moment, it would be a
little while before she was at liberty. It came into my head that she
was leaving me alone as long as possible in the room where her wonderful
pearls