“You told me to go and rest.”
“You could not meet Mr. Spode. And I could not have him meet you. You had to have some reason for going.”
“But what of the earring on the floor? Were there three? Was one of them a different one?”
“That is what we are to think. The one that was sent to the shop. It is what my father thinks, though he clearly has other thoughts. But there were only the original two.”
“Then how did it get on the floor?”
“Well, who saw it there?” said Juliet.
“Oh, you put it there! You brought it back when you went out of the room on some pretext. And you put it between the boards, when you moved those rugs. I thought you were restless; I remember wishing I had as little reason to be. No wonder the earring was polished, when it had so lately come from the shop. And you would not have noticed that one of them was marked. And you did not think of the case. What a clear and complicated tale! So you brought the earrings here.”
“To wear them. I thought it would please my father. I supposed he had sold them from necessity, and would be glad to see them rescued.”
“It is true that I am in your hands, Juliet.”
“I never know why people say that, when someone knows something to their disadvantage. Anything she said, could be denied, and she would get great discredit. I would never risk my fair name just to blot somebody else’s, however nice it would be. And why should I want to blot yours? It would put you in a pathetic position, and I dislike feeling pity.”
“Well, anyhow you know what to think of me.”
“I don’t feel I know much more than before. Might not many people do what you did? To take something that someone did not want, to give someone something that he did — was it so bad? It sounds as if it was almost right?”
“You cannot think the same of me.”
“Not the same; I do think differently. But I don’t know that I think any less; I am not quite sure. I rather like your anxiety to serve Roderick to be stronger than your respect for yourself. Self-respect is too common a thing to rouse my feeling; people have so much. You may have acted rather nobly. I do not mean that Shakespeare would have thought so; he took the accepted views; but I am inclined to think so myself. And I don’t mean that all crime is noble. I am not a modern person.”
“You are making it easy for me, Juliet.”
“Well, it would be unkind to do anything else.”
“You would not have done such a thing yourself.”
“I wonder if I should. I always wonder if I should withstand temptation. I never seem able to meet any. I should like to be put to the test. I am so interested in myself.”
“I am not,” said Maria, with a sigh. “I have never met a drearier subject. And I reproached those poor children for doing as I had done, when they did it for my sake!”
“As you did it for Roderick’s. There must be a strain of pure nobility in you.”
“It is a thing we must hide and be ashamed of.”
“Well, that does happen to nobility. People are always disconcerted when it is found out. I suppose they feel it makes their ordinary life so inexplicable. Not that that is true in your case.”
“You are trying to comfort me, Juliet.”
“Well, my dear, you seem to need comfort.”
“Suppose something of the kind happened in your family?”
“Well, people are known to be harsh judges of their own families.”
“You and Lesbia are upright people,” said Maria. “I never feel so sure about your father. I do not feel I know him, though he has lived in my house longer than I have. You do not mind my saying that?”
“That is what people say, when they know it is not the truth. But I do not mind very much.”
“Of course I am not without affection for him.”
“I wonder if you know how unusual you are, Maria?”
“Do you feel you know so much about him yourself?”
“I have come to know more lately.”
“In the last few months?”
“In the last few hours,” said Juliet, throwing her eyes over Maria’s face. “It was seeing him with Oliver’s friend.”
“It did show him in a new light. He was really almost fatherly. The three men made quite an impressive group, and he seemed to fit in as the head of it. If they were related, we should remark on the family likeness. It shows how types can repeat. I suppose I owe your father money for the earring. Though not any more than if I had not been found out. How confused our minds are!”
“Yours certainly is. Of course you did owe it, but you do not now. The earring on the floor was mine, and he gave it away as his own. The score has been paid.”
“So it is to you that I owe the money.”
“Yes, but I forgive you the debt.”
“What will you do with one earring?”
“Keep it in case some use for it arises. I can hardly believe it will not fulfil some need.”
“Suppose you showed it to them all! They would think it was a stock pattern indeed.”
“I shall not show it to them. They might not think only that. Indeed, too much thought would be involved. It is a subject that always entails a good deal.”
“I wonder if Roderick is worthy of what I did for him.”
“If he is not, it is the better to have done it. If he is, it is no more than you ought to have done. And we do feel it was a little more?”
“I do not mean I am proud of it. I should not like to tell him the truth. But I daresay he has not told me everything about himself.”
“Well, we all keep some things to ourselves, those little, mean things that cause us more shame than big ones, though we do not know why. Not that we do not really know.”
“The big ones cause us shame,” said Maria with a sigh.
“I do not believe you commit the small ones. And that is almost unique. Though this thing is not a big one of course. You have simply committed one small thing.”
“I am grateful to you from my heart, Juliet. If the earring had not been found, the quest and cry would have continued. And what should I have done, if the cloud had fallen on Aldom?”
“Left him under it, as you did when it did fall on him. What else could be done? And protested your own trust in him, and probably protested a thought too much. You almost did that today. It put me on the track and prepared my mind for the truth.”
“Other people are not as alert as you are.”
“Oh, no, they are not,” said Juliet.
“Your father does not suspect me. It makes me feel I have sailed under false colours.”
“We could not sail under our true ones. It would mean sailing under too many.”
“Was your sister, Mary, like you, Juliet?”
“A little. More than Lesbia is. And we were greater friends. And my father loved her the most of the three. Of course, she was the best.”
“Why ‘of course’? Because she is dead?”
“Yes,” said Juliet.
“I wish I had known her, though it is an odd thing to say.”
“I wish she had known you. And I do not think it is odd.”
“Well, my pretty, you had your rest,” said Sir Roderick, leading in his household. “You had a sleep and feel the better for it. I feel rather fatigued myself. It has been an exhausting day.”
“I have been wondering,” said Maria, with an impulse to hasten into talk, “if the children might ask their friends at school to spend a day here at some time. They seem to have liked some of them. And there is no need for them to disappear from sight, as if they had been expelled.”
“No need at all,” said Lesbia, “as that was not the case.”
“You would allow your girls to come?”
“But by all means, Maria. I have advocated companionship for Clemence, and half a loaf is better than no bread. And I hold no brief for all work and no play.”