L'Ami Fritz now stood staring at her. He had put his right hand--the hand
holding the thing he had taken out of the drawer--behind his back. He was
very pale; the sweat had broken out on his sallow, thin face.

For a horrible moment there floated across Sylvia's sub-conscious mind
the thought of Anna Wolsky, and of what she now knew to have been Anna
Wolsky's fate.

But she put that thought, that awful knowledge, determinedly away from
her. The instinct of self-preservation possessed her wholly.

Already, in far less time than it would have taken to formulate the
words, she had made up her mind to speak, and she knew exactly what she
meant to say.

"It does not matter about my pearls," Sylvia said, quietly. Her voice
shook a little, but otherwise she spoke in her usual tone. "If you are
going into Paris to-morrow morning, perhaps you would take them to be
restrung?"

The man looked questioningly across at his wife.

"Yes, that sounds a good plan," he said, in his guttural voice.

"No," exclaimed Madame Wachner, decidedly, "that will not do at all! We
must not run that risk. The pearls must be found, now, at once! Stoop!"
she said imperiously. "Stoop, Sylvia! Help me to find your pearls!"

She made a gesture as if she also meant to bend down....