“And you’re a fool.  Look here, I can lose you your job and have you sent to the prison where naughty girls go.  See what I’ve got in my pocket.”

Still grasping my frock, he scooped something out of an inner pocket of his coat, and held it for me to look at, in the hollow of his palm.  I gave a little cry.  It was Lady Turnour’s gorgeous bursting sun.

“I nicked that off the dressin’ table the other night, when you weren’t looking.  Has Lady T. been askin’ for it?”

“No,” I answered, speaking more to myself than to him.  “She—­she’s had too much to think of.  She didn’t count her things that night; and at Nevers she didn’t open the bag.”

“So much the worse for you, my pet, when she does find out.  She left her jewels in your charge.  When I came into the room, they were all lyin’ about on the dressin’ table, and you were playin’ with ’em.”

“I was putting them back into her bag.”

“So you say.  Jolly careless of you not to know you hadn’t put this thing back.  It’s about the best of the lot she hadn’t got plastered on for the servants’ ball.”

“It was careless,” I admitted.  “But it was your fault.  You came in, and were so horrid, and upset me so much that I forgot what I’d put into the bag already, and what I hadn’t.”

“Lady T. doesn’t know I went back to her room.”

“I’ll tell her!” I cried.

“I’ll bet you’ll tell her, right enough.  But I can tell a different story.  I’ll say I didn’t go near the room.  My story will be that I was walkin’ through the woods this afternoon on my way to Charretier’s chateau when I saw you with the thing in your hands, lookin’ at it.  Probably goin’ to ask the shuvver to dispose of it for you—­what? and share profits.”

“Oh, you coward!” I exclaimed, and snatched the diamond brooch from him.

Instantly he let go my dress, laughing.

“That’s right!  That’s what I wanted,” he said.  “Now you’ve got it, and you can keep it.  I’ll tell Lady T. where to look for it—­unless you’ll change your mind, and give me that kiss.”

I was so angry, so stricken with horror and a kind of nightmare fear which I had not time to analyze, that I stood silent, trembling all over, with the brooch in my hand.  How silly I had been to play his game for him, just like the poor stupid cat who pulled the hot chestnut out of the fire!  I don’t think any chestnut could ever have been as hot as that bursting sun!

I wanted to drop it in the grass, or throw it as far as I could see it, but dared not, because it would be my fault that it was lost, and Lady Turnour would believe Bertie’s story all the more readily.  She would think he had seen me with the jewel, and that I’d hidden it because I was afraid of what he might do.

“To kiss, or not to kiss. That’s the question,” laughed Bertie.

“Is it?” said Jack.  And Jack’s hand, inside Mr. Stokes’s beautiful, tall collar, shook Bertie back and forth till his teeth chattered like castanets, and his good-looking pink face grew more and more like a large, boiled beetroot.