having gone up to town on his business; but he didn't get home when
expected, and they sat down without him after all. I was about my
work, turning down beds and so forth, and I had done Mrs. Oliver's
about ten minutes, and was in my lady's room, when Mrs. Oliver's own
maid came running in with a face like paper.

'Oh, what ever shall I do?' she cried, wringing her hands, as they
say in books, and I always thought it nonsense, but she certainly
did, though I never saw any one do it before or since.

'What is it?' I asked her.

'It's my mistress's diamond necklace,' she said. 'She was going to
wear it to-night. And then she said, No, she wouldn't; she'd have
the emeralds, and I left it on the dressing-table instead of locking
it up, and now it's gone!'

I went into Mrs. Oliver's room with her, and there was the jewel-box
with the pretty shining things turned out on the dressing-table, for
Mrs. Oliver had a heap of jewellery that had come to her from her
own people, and she as fond of wearing it as if she was slim and
twenty, instead of being fifty, and as round as an orange. We looked
on the dressing-table and we looked on the floor, and we looked in
the curtains to see if it had got in any of them. But look high,
look low, no diamond necklace could we find. So at last Scott--that
was Mrs. Oliver's maid--said there was nothing for it but to go and
tell her mistress. The ladies were in the drawing-room by this time.
So she went down all of a tremble, and in the hall there was Mrs.
Oliver looking anxious out of the front door, which was open, it
being summer and the house standing in its own park.