the club
rooms, but I begin to think now I didn't have it with me at all. Then
there is my opal ring. To be sure, it isn't worth a great deal, but one
who will take little things will take large ones."

"What's the matter, Mother? Norah been appropriating property not her
own?"

"I'm very much afraid she has, Tryon. What would you do about it? It is so
unpleasant to charge a person with stealing. It is such a vulgar thing to
steal. Somehow I thought Norah was more refined."

"Why, I suppose there's nothing to do but just charge her with it, is
there? Are you quite sure it is gone? What is it, any way? A ring, did you
say?"

"No, it's a hat," said Cornelia shortly. "A sixty-dollar hat. I wish I'd
kept it now, and then she wouldn't have dared. It had two beautiful willow
ostrich plumes on it, but mother didn't think it was becoming. She wanted
some color about it instead of all black. I left it in my room, and
charged Norah to see that the man got it when he called, and now the man
comes and says he wants the hat, and it is _gone_! Norah insists that when
she last saw it, it was in my room. But of course that's absurd, for there
was nobody else to take it but Thompson, and he's been in the family for
so long."

"Nonsense!" said her brother sharply, dropping his fruit knife in his
plate with a rattle that made the young woman jump. "Cornelia, I'm
ashamed of you, thinking that poor, innocent girl has stolen your hat.
Why, she wouldn't steal a pin, I am sure. You can tell she's honest by
looking into her eyes. Girls with blue eyes like that don't lie and
steal."

"Really!" Cornelia remarked haughtily. "You seem to know a great deal
about her eyes. You may feel differently when I find the hat in her
possession."

"Cornelia," interrupted Tryon, quite beside himself, "don't think of such
a thing as speaking to that poor girl about that hat. I know she hasn't
stolen it. The hat will probably be found, and then how will you feel?"

"But I tell you the hat cannot be found!" said the