“Oh!—oh, yes!” She pushed the hair back from her face and seemed suddenly to regain complete self-possession. “Yes, you can call it jealousy. I’ve always disliked Anne—ever since she came queening it here. I put the damned thing under the desk. I hoped it would get her into trouble. It would have done if you hadn’t been such a Nosey Parker, fingering things on dressing-tables. Anyway, it isn’t a clergyman’s business to go about helping the police.”
It was a spiteful, childish outburst. I took no notice of it. Indeed, at that moment, she seemed a very pathetic child indeed.
Her childish attempt at vengeance against Anne seemed hardly to be taken seriously. I told her so, and added that I should return the earring to her and say nothing of the circumstances in which I had found it. She seemed rather touched by that.
“That’s nice of you,” she said.
She paused a minute and then said, keeping her face averted and evidently choosing her words with care:
“You know, Mr. Clement, I should—I should get Dennis away from here soon, if I were you I—think it would be better.”
“Dennis?” I raised my eyebrows in slight surprise but with a trace of amusement too.
“I think it would be better.” She added, still in the same awkward manner: “I’m sorry about Dennis. I didn’t think he—anyway, I’m sorry.”
We left it at that.