As it turned out, Chrysanthe was not due to visit her relatives for another week, though there were few opportunities for her and Marinus to meet again in private. He was still ostensibly paying court to Pusanella, and thus it was more often in a trio that he met the real darling of his heart. That was when they were not dining with Agon and Hippolyta. Marinus was sure that the lady of the house suspected him; her eyes seemed never to leave him when they were all together, and he dared not address too many remarks to Chrysanthe for fear of arousing further suspicion.

  Agon, meanwhile, was forever importuning Pelleus with requests to read and demonstrate his learning. The young man did his best to play along, though it was trying on his patience. One detail stuck out to him as particularly troubling, however. It was the change that had come over Agon's appearance one day, without apparent cause. He had taken to slicking his thin blond hair back from his temples and forehead, exactly as Marinus wore his hair, and had likewise started wearing brighter garments of blues and turquoise colour, again mimicking Marinus's fashions. If Marinus himself had noticed this, he didn't say anything to his friend, but Pelleus thought it boded ill.

  Agatha, meanwhile, was out of patience with the two youths. Indeed, she was on the point of despair, fearing she would never lay hands on that diamond necklace. She had seen the boy, Marinus, plotting with Chrysanthe, the daughter of the house, and her friend in the staff up at the Hermenides estate had told her the girl was soon to go to another part of the island. Dim-witted as she was, Agatha could put two and two together.

  "They are planning to elope, and then they will be out of my clutches forever! By the furies!" she muttered to herself, and she pondered what to do about it. She had one card still to play, and now that she understood what Marinus was up to, she could roll on with her plan B. After all, there might still be a reward for the person who could expose the villains in time to thwart their objectives.

  Thus she sought an audience with her employer, Onesimus, approaching him just after lunch.

  "I am all ears," he said, leaning back in his chair. "What is it you want to say to me?"

  "I wanted to bring it to your attention first, milord, before word should get out." Agatha said, almost falling to her knees beside him. "You see, I have had my suspicions for a while now..."

  "Yes, yes, you may skip the preamble," the old man said.

  "It is those two youths... Marinus and Pusanella," she spat out this last name with venom. "They are not who they claim to be. If your lordship will act now, we may prevent a great calamity!"

  "Oh yes?"

  "Yes, milord. You see, they are not a pair of lovers after all, but two wicked young men who have been playing you false. Even now, that crafty rascal Marinus is seducing Agon's daughter and plotting to elope with her. I don't doubt the pair of them will carry her off by force if all else fails!"

  "I see," Onesimus said, after a pause. A dubious statement from such as he, or so Agatha seemed to think.

  "You do? And what does milord want to do about it?"

  "I? By the sound of it you have ideas of your own which you are bursting to share," he said, bemused.

  "Why, we should tell his lordship at once. He will apprehend those wretches and put them to agonies – prison, tortures; nothing is too bad for them, the villains!"

  Seeing her heart thus revealed in all its spitefulness, Onesimus was appalled.

  "Agatha, Agatha, what can you hope to gain from this?" he said, shaking his head.

  "Gain? My master assumes the worst of me. I only intended to redress a wrong. The two youths, they have deceived you!" the housekeeper protested, but her prospects of a reward seemed to be disappearing before her very eyes, and that did nothing to improve her temper.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "There you are mistaken," Onesimus replied. "I do not doubt it was their intention to deceive," he hastened to add, when Agatha made a disbelieving sound, "but I for one was never fooled. I have lived a long time, and sightless though I may be, I can discern between truth and falsehoods. Yet even more than that, I flatter myself that I can discern character. They are not the criminals you make out, Agatha. I think we have little to fear from Marinus and Pelleus, and my heart tells me some good may come of their knavery."

  "How did you-"

  "Know his name? I managed to winkle it out of Anneus, the fisherman," Onesimus said with a smile. "Now, Agatha," his face became stern. "I implore, nay, I command you to speak no more about this, to me or anyone else. I will not reprimand you for concealing this from me, just as I will not reprimand the youths in question, but neither will I reward your duplicity."

  "But master, lord Agon-"

  "What concerns lord Agon and his household is none of your business," Onesimus said curtly. "Since Pelleus is out of our hands, we cannot intervene without putting the lad at risk. He must find his own way out of this muddle, without our interference."

  He said this with an air of finality that told Agatha she was dismissed for the present. She sulked off to her quarters feeling mutinous.

  All that time and effort, coaxing and coercing those two liars, all for nothing! she fumed, seizing her broom and attacking the stairs with it in a frenzy of cleaning.

  Onesimus, she knew, was not a man to be trifled with. She had held out on the hope that, if the theft of the necklace failed, she could extort some more money out of her employer. But his response had set her straight – she would get nothing. Nothing!

  "And he is almost at death's door, and I am not getting any younger... how am I to support myself in my old age, when my strength has left me?" she said, full of self pity.

  She had thought of going to Agon, of course, but she knew that he feared Onesimus even more than she did, and would not dare to gainsay the old man. Onesimus had an influence over Agon, and over most people, that crafty Agatha could not comprehend. It was a moral influence, that by its very purity could crush a guilty conscience and bring even a ruthless man to heel. Only the truly prideful, who were blind to their own faults, were unmoved by that authority. Such a person was Agatha. She had no time for Onesimus's correction, not when she had been robbed of the rightful reward for her cunning! Now she was moved by spite, since there was nothing left to be gained, and thought to revenge herself upon Marinus and Pelleus, who had strung her along with false hopes.

  When the cascades and clouds of dust had settled from her vigorous assault on the stairs, she swept over to Marinus's room, in which the youth had been sitting quietly all this time, thinking.

  "You!" he cried, seeing the housekeeper's head poke around the door.

  "Tonight, master Marinus. It must be tonight," she said, wrinkling her nose at him. "I have told my master I have an important declaration to make, and he wants to hear it from me tomorrow morning. If you do not recover that necklace in time, I shall tell all."

  The look on Marinus's face told her he believed her, and would obey. He was white as a sheet.

  In fairness to Agatha, she had demanded this of him at an opportune time. Chrysanthe had departed with her mother to see her relatives in another part of the island, and Hippolyta never travelled with her precious diamonds for fear of robbery. If there was ever an occasion to steal them, it was then, when the house was half-empty.

  And so, daunted as he was, Marinus did not despair. He did not fear failure so much as the disgrace such a theft would bring him, and the irreparable harm it would do to his relationship with the family.

  But for Pelleus... I must try.