Here, however, upon the landing, she awaited him with obvious reluctance.
"Are you going to send for the police ?" she asked without looking at him.
"No," he answered.
"Why not ?" "If I had meant to give you away I should have told Mrs.Fitzgerald at once that I had seen you take her bracelet, instead of following you out on to the roof." "Do you mind telling me what you do propose to do, then ?" she continued still without looking at him, still without the slightest note of appeal in her tone.
He withdrew the bracelet from his pocket and balanced it upon his finger.
"I am going to say that I took it for a joke," he declared.
She hesitated.
"Mrs.Fitzgerald's sense of humor is not elastic," she warned him.
"She will be very angry, of course," he assented, "but she will not believe that I meant to steal it." The girl moved slowly a few steps away.
"I suppose that I ought to thank you," she said, still with averted face and sullen manner.

"You have really been very decent.

I am much obliged." "Are you not coming down ?" he asked.
"Not at present," she answered.

"I am going to my room." He looked around the landing on which they stood, at the miserable, uncarpeted floor, the ill-painted doors on which the long-forgotten varnish stood out in blisters, the jumble of dilapidated hot-water cans, a mop, and a medley of brooms and rags all thrown down together in a corner.
"But these are the servants' quarters, surely," he remarked.
"They are good enough for me; my room is here," she told him, turning the handle of one of the doors and disappearing.

The prompt turning of the key sounded, he thought, a little ungracious.
With the bracelet in his hand, Tavernake descended three more flights of stairs and entered the drawing-room of the private hotel conducted by Mrs.Raithby Lawrence, whose husband, one learned from her frequent reiteration of the fact, had once occupied a distinguished post in the Merchant Service of his country.