And you _know_ you can to me."
But Constance, in the slang of her girlhood days, "wasn't taking any."
She was afraid that Madalena was trying to draw her into finding fault
with her host and hostess, in order to repeat what she said, with
embroideries, to Nelson Smith or Annesley. She was not a woman to be
caught by the subtleties of another; and in dread of compromising herself
did the Countess de Santiago an injustice. If she had ventured any
disparaging remarks of "Cousin Anne," they would not have been repeated.
* * * * *
The season began early and brilliantly that year, for the weather was
springlike, even in February; and people were ready to enjoy everything.
The one blot on the general brightness was a series of robberies.
Something happened on an average of every ten or twelve days, and always
in an unexpected quarter, where the police were not looking.
Among the first to suffer were Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Smith. The Portman
Square house was broken into, the thief entering a window of the "den"
on the ground floor, and making a clean sweep of all the jewellery
Knight and Annesley owned except her engagement ring, the string of
pearls which had been her lover's wedding gift, and the wonderful blue
diamond on its thin gold chain.
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