The Beloved Stranger - By Grace Livingston Hill Page 0,36

it had come in! And yes, the ring and bracelets were there! She remembered taking them off. But not the necklace! Where could the necklace be? Perhaps it had come unfastened and dropped in the big chair while she was eating her supper!

She stepped across the hall quickly and tapped at the door of her aunt’s room.

“Aunt Pat, may I come in a minute?” she called, and upon receiving permission she burst into the room excitedly: “Aunt Pat! I’ve lost my emerald necklace! Could I have dropped it in your room?”

Chapter 7

For a moment Sherrill and Aunt Pat stood facing one another, taking in the full significance of the loss from every side. Sherrill knew just how much that necklace was prized in the family. Aunt Pat had told her the story of its purchase at a fabulous price by an ancestor who had bought it from royalty for his young bride. It had come down to Aunt Pat and been treasured by her and kept most preciously. Rare emeralds, of master workmanship in their cutting and exquisite setting! Sherrill stood appalled, aghast, facing the possibility that it was hopelessly gone.

“Oh, Aunt Pat!” she moaned. “You oughtn’t to have given it to me! I—I’m—not fit—to have anything rare! Either man or treasure!” she added with a great sob, her lips trembling. “It—seems—I—can’t—keep—anything!”

Aunt Pat broke into a roguish grin.

“I hope you didn’t call that man rare, Sherrill Cameron!” she chuckled. “And for sweet pity’s sake, if you ever do find a real man, don’t put him on a level with mere jewels! Now, take that look off your face and use your head a little. Where did you have that necklace last? You wore it this evening, I know, for I noticed with great satisfaction that you were not wearing that ornate trinket your would-be bridegroom gave you.”

“Oh, I thought I had it on when I came in here!” groaned Sherrill. “I just can’t remember! I’m sure I didn’t take it off anywhere! At least I can’t remember doing it.”

She rushed suddenly to the big chair where she had been sitting for the last hour and pulled out the cushions frantically, running her hands down in the folds of the upholstery, but discovering nothing but a lost pair of scissors.

She turned on the overhead lights and got down on her knees, searching earnestly, but there was no green translucent gleam of emeralds.

Meanwhile Aunt Pat stood thinking, a canny look in her old eyes.

“Now look here, Sherrill,” she said suddenly, whirling round upon the frantic girl, “you haven’t lost your soul, you know, and we are still alive and well. Emeralds are just emeralds after all. Get some poise! Get up off that floor and go quietly downstairs! Look just casually wherever you remember to have been. Just walk over the same places. Don’t do any wild pawing around; just merely look in the obvious places. Don’t make a noise, and don’t say anything to the servants if any of them are up. I don’t think they are. Gemmie thought they were gone to bed. I just sent Gemmie away. Then, if you don’t find it, come up to me.”

Sherrill made a little dismal moan.

“Oh, for mercy’s sake!” said Aunt Pat impatiently. “It isn’t as if you hadn’t had a chance to wear them once anyway, and one doesn’t wear emeralds, such emeralds, around every day. You won’t miss them much in the long run even if you never find them. Now stop your hysterics and run downstairs, but don’t make any noise!”

Sherrill cast a tearful look at her aunt and hurried away, stopping at her own room to get a little flashlight she kept in her desk.

Step by step she retraced the evening in an agony of memory. It wasn’t just her losing the emeralds forever; it was Aunt Pat losing the pleasure of her having them. It was—well, something else, a horrible haunting fear that appeared and disappeared on the horizon of her mind and gripped her heart like a clutching hand.

When she came in her search to the long french window out which she and Copeland had passed to the garden such a little while before, she paused and hesitated, catching her breath at a new memory. If it came to that, there would be something she couldn’t tell Aunt Pat! She couldn’t hope to make her understand about that kiss!

Oh! A long shudder went through her weary body, and every taut nerve hurt like a toothache. How was