"Has any stranger been here while we were at dinner?" inquired Dr. Crossett gravely.
"Yes," cried Maria, eagerly. "There was! A woman; a Dago or something."
"I saw the woman," said Lola quietly. "She called to see you, father. She was a collector for some Hospital fund. I did not leave the room while she was here."
"Miss Lola!" Maria turned to her. "Didn't you go there for something? Didn't you put the money somewhere to keep it safe? Didn't you take it out, meaning to put it back, and forget?"
"You are all lookin' at me," cried poor Maria, "as if you thought I was a thief! Why don't you search me? Why don't you search my things? What do you all stand there for, doin' nothin', and lookin' at me like that?"
"Maria!" Dr. Barnhelm spoke gravely, but very kindly. "We, all of us, are very fond of you. From the first you have been more like a friend to us than like a servant."
"Oh, don't I know that? Didn't Miss Lola pick me up out of a tenement, a dirty, ragged, hungry little kid? Ain't you done for me what my own father and mother never did? Don't you see that's the very reason I couldn't rob you? I couldn't! I couldn't!"
"I blame myself," said Dr. Barnhelm huskily, "for leaving so large a sum of money where a young girl could be tempted by it."
"I have it," exclaimed Dr. Crossett. "Suppose that we, all of us, were to leave the room for a few moments, eh?" He turned from one to another, doing his very best to look smiling and unconcerned. "Maria, while we are gone, might hunt about a little, and if she found this money and put it back, no one would ever say a word. All would be as it was before."
"I never took it!" Maria's voice was shrill now and in it there was a note of hopelessness.
"Tell them I never took it, Miss Lola! Tell them."
"I have never known Maria to be dishonest, father."
"Maria," Dr. Barnhelm went to her, distressed, appealing. "That money was borrowed by me to pay for the electrical apparatus that is to repay me for all the work of my whole life. You know, Maria, how, day and night, for months and years, I have gone on, changing, adding, destroying, working. I neglected everything and everybody for it. You know how much it means to me!"
For a moment she could not answer, although they all stood there, waiting. At last her voice came slowly through the sobs that shook her from head to foot:
