to have to tacitly admit that I was quite unable to provide for her?
Yes, Madame; it cut both soul and pride. But I am very poor. What
could I do? I am so poor that always I have little to wear--see,
Madame, this old suit is all that I possess! It prevents me, possibly,
from getting better wages than I might get if I were not so shabby.
Often, also, I do not have enough to eat. That, Madame, is true,
although my Anna does not know it. Well, glittering in that little box
upon the dresser, when I was there at your house, I saw so much
comfort, so much happiness."

The old man's art had won, indeed. He had quite convinced the woman
that it had been he and not his daughter who had stolen the diamond.

She was not exactly disappointed, although it robbed the crime of one
of its most dramatic elements--ingratitude. She was being quite as
well diverted by the old man's dignity and calm as she would have been
by his poor Anna's wild, hysterical grief. She was, perhaps, she
thought, a very lucky woman. She had not only had a valuable diamond
stolen, which, of itself, was entertaining, in a way, but she had
recovered it through such a strange experience as would furnish food
for tales to be told in boudoirs and over tea-cups for three months.

"So it really was you!"

"Yes, yes; have I not told you?"

There was an inconsistency in this affair, however, and Mrs. Vanderlyn
thought herself a veritable Sherlock Holmes as she pounced on it.
"But that note from Anna?" she protested.