The two stared at each other in silence, and both were pale.

Juliet\'s mind was confused. "The pearls false!" She tried to hammer the words into her brain, and understand fully what the thing would mean for her and Pat. She thought of Louis Mayen, the "super money-lender," who had kept the pearls for months, and supposed that Claremanagh also must be thinking of him.

"What a treacherous, horrible man!" she broke out, at last. The Duke stared, almost stupidly—if he could be stupid.

"Who is treacherous—horrible?" he stammered.

"Why, your friend Mayen, of course!" she explained. "My poor Pat!"

Comprehension dawned in Claremanagh\'s eyes. "Oh, Mayen had nothing to do with this!" he assured her.

"Who else, then?" Juliet persisted. "The purser on the ship, who had the box in his safe, coming over? But he didn\'t have the seal. Mayen had it. He—or his messenger could——"

"Put that idea out of your head, my darling," urged Claremanagh. "Mayen had the seal, and of course it\'s on the cards that Defasquelle, his messenger, might have stolen it or had an imitation one made. But neither of them had the——"

Abruptly the Duke stopped. He had been talking fast and eagerly, and he pulled himself up so short that it was as if he stumbled. Juliet had been examining the quaint clasp of the false pearls, which she still had in her hand, but that shocked pause brought her eyes to her husband\'s face. It had been pale and strained, but now there was a look upon it of physical suffering.

"You\'ve thought of the one who did it!" she cried. "Someone you care for!"

By an intense effort Claremanagh seemed to withdraw all expression from his face. It became dull, like a handsome mask. "I wish I had thought of any one," he said. "No such luck."

Juliet had pitied him unselfishly at first, for after all the pearls were his, not hers, and the loss—sentimental and material—would be very great if the Tsarina\'s pearls were gone. But his look, his changed tone, and the cloud that seemed to rise between them like a mist roused her vague resentment. She felt as if she had tried to comfort him and he had pushed her away.

"Pat!" she exclaimed, sharply. "It\'s no use your trying to put me off. You have thought who changed the pearls—or anyhow, of a person who might have done it. You\'ve simply got to tell me. I have a right to know."

"My dear child," he protested. "You do spring to the wildest conclusions!"

Juliet\'s anger rose. "The whole thing is wild. Only wild conclusions are of any use. If you don\'t want me to try and help you, I won\'t. But I can\'t prevent myself from seeing one thing that perhaps you don\'t see yet. If the real thief isn\'t soon found, and this story gets out, there will be some horrid gossip about you."

Claremanagh flushed scarlet. "I do see," he said. "At least, I see what you\'re hinting at. If I purloin my own pearls, and secretly sell them, while getting credit at the same time for giving them to my wife, I bring off a very neat coup. That\'s what you mean, isn\'t it?"

The thing sounded so crudely villainous when put into words that Juliet was ashamed. But there was a fierce light in the eyes which until to-day had never looked at her except in love—or seeming love. Juliet would not let her husband fancy for an instant that he had made her flinch. "Yes, that\'s what I mean," she answered. "One\'s dear friends are capable of any insinuation."

"And even those dearer and nearer than friends!" Pat flung at her. "Oh, I realize that I\'m the classic target. A poor Irish peer—the poorest of the lot!—who dares to marry America\'s richest girl. No beastly trick too vile to believe of him! Of course a blighter like that couldn\'t have married the girl for love."

To hear the words spoken, even in bitterest sarcasm, was like the prick of a knife. Juliet had pushed them out of her own mind so often that it was sharpest anguish to have them thrust into it by Pat\'s adored lips. If he loved her, she could not see how it was possible for him to speak like that! In thinking this, she pitied herself desperately, and forgot her own words which had lashed him to retaliation. She forgot, too, how that very morning her lips had flung this very taunt. She had shown him sharply how much her own she considered her fortune, her house, and everything he shared as her husband.

It seemed to her that now he was inadvertently confessing, rather than sneering at possible accusers. Juliet defended her own attractions pitifully, yet there was nothing pitiful in her look. She loomed tall and aggressive, and cruelly beautiful, with blazing eyes and cheeks.

"A great many men have told me they loved me, and that no one could help loving me for myself, but I never believed any of them till I met you; and then I was a conceited fool to think you could care for me after Lyda Pavoya."

Pat started as if she had boxed his ears: and Juliet, too, was surprised. She had not meant to say that. The thing had said itself. For an instant his eyes flamed. Then their fire died out, and left them cold. He looked disgusted. "I told you once that I had never loved Mademoiselle Pavoya," he said. "One isn\'t used to having one\'s word doubted. It\'s rather humiliating to have it happen with one\'s own wife. But putting that aside, why not keep to the point? Why bring up the lady\'s name when we are discussing quite a different affair—the affair of these pearls?"

Out of Claremanagh\'s coldness a demon was born, and flew straight to Juliet\'s heart. For an instant she lost all sense of her own love for her husband. She hated him and wished to hurt him as much as she could, because it seemed that he had gone out of his way to hurt her. She tingled all over with indignant humiliation. It was as if Pat had said, "I happen to be your husband, but you are only a commoner with no traditions of fine breeding behind you, while I am a man whose ancestors might have had yours for servants. No wonder you have no intuitive idea of decent decorum."

"Is it a different affair?" she cried. "Or is it one single affair—the affair of Lyda Pavoya and your pearls?"

Again the words had spoken themselves, but a flare of enlightenment came with them. Surely something had made her speak. Something which knew what she hadn\'t thought of till this moment: that Lyda Pavoya had taken the pearls.

How she could possibly have got them, if they had ever been in Louis Mayen\'s keeping, Juliet could not see. But she had them—she had them! That was clear: and the fact would account for Pat\'s sudden breaking off of a sentence. He had begun to defend Mayen and Defasquelle. "But neither one of them had the——" he had said, and stopped short, with an awful look on his face—the look of seeing something which no one else must be allowed to see. What thing was there that Mayen and his messenger had not, which another person might have had? A thing which would make theft possible? A person who must be protected at any price?

Juliet could not guess yet what the thing might be, but the second guess was all too easy.

This time the Duke showed no sign of surprise, therefore he was not surprised. He merely looked more disgusted than before, which made his lack of love for his wife and his wish to defend the Polish dancer more evident to Juliet\'s racked mind.

"When I gave you my word about not loving Mademoiselle Pavoya I gave it also about the pearls," Claremanagh said. "I told you then that she had never had them. I can only repeat the statement, since you seem to have forgotten."

"I have forgotten nothing!" cried Juliet. "It\'s a man\'s code of honour, I suppose, to defend a woman, no matter how. But if that\'s not so—if you don\'t care enough for Lyda Pavoya to lie for her to your wife, I\'d like to know how you\'ll answer this question: Do you swear that you don\'t suspect her of somehow stealing the real pearls, and putting imitation ones in their place?"

Claremanagh\'s face changed. He had been frankly though coldly furious. Now he looked stricken. "I would lie for no one on earth, except for you, and then only to save your life," he said. "It\'s an insult from you to me to ask that I should swear such a thing.

"Very well, then, your simple word is enough," said Juliet. "Give it that you don\'t think Pavoya has the pearls."

Claremanagh was silent, his eyes upon her. And in that silence, short as it was, Juliet heard a tiny voice speak. It whispered: "The thing Pavoya had, which the other didn\'t have, was a copy. She had a copy of the pearls."

"I could not believe such a thing," the Duke answered. "I have known Mademoiselle Pavoya for years. She is a good woman."

Juliet laughed, and laughing flung the false pearls on the floor. "\'A good woman!\' You have original ideas! I\'ve heard a lot of things about her from a lot of people, but never that before."

"Because only malicious speeches are amusing, they are the ones \'a lot of people\'—the lot we know—mostly make."

"Pooh!" sneered Juliet. "I see the whole thing now—except how she got the real pearls. But this imitation rope she had. You can\'t face me, and say she hadn\'t."

"I\'ll say nothing more on the subject while you\'re in this mood," returned Claremanagh.

"All right, if you think prevarication more honourable than lying straight out," panted Juliet, holding down sobs. "But you won\'t do her any good with me—or yourself either. You were scared blue when I said the eye of the clasp looked to the right instead of to the left, like the eye on your seal ring. You\'d hardly believe it till you had to. Then the whole thing grew clear to you, as it\'s growing for me now. This copy existed. The clasp was made the wrong way, by mistake or on purpose. As soon as I spoke, you knew what had happened. Your first thought—as soon as you could think—was to save that woman. But you shan\'t save her! I——"

"Do you intend to make a scandal of this beastly business?" the Duke cut her short with violence. "If you do, you will repent it all your life."

Juliet quivered. "I don\'t care about my life now," she said. "You\'ve spoilt it. You couldn\'t punish me any more than you\'ve punished me already—for loving and trusting you. So it doesn\'t matter what I——"

"It matters immensely," he broke in again. "You are cruel to yourself—to me—to a woman who has never injured you. When I say that you\'ll repent making a scandal, I don\'t mean because I\'d try to \'punish\' you. My God, no! You\'ll repent because you will be doing a great injustice which can\'t possibly be repaired. And at heart, when you\'re true to yourself, you are just."

"It\'s no use your trying to appeal to my sense of justice," Juliet warned him. "That\'s the last thing for you to bring up!"

He looked at her very sadly, very strangely, it seemed to his wife, as if anger were dying out, and a great sorrow had taken its place. But that was only his cleverness—his deadly, Irish cleverness, of course!

"What, then, do you intend to do?" he asked.

Once more confusion fogged the girl\'s brain, a desolate confusion like chaos after ordered beauty; the end of all joy, ............