The stolen brooch, which clasps shut around Mrs. Cheveley’s wrist, marks her as a liar and a thief. Like Robert’s letter to Baron Arnheim, it is the unambiguous incarnation of moral ambiguity. Both Robert and Mrs. Cheveley try to dismiss the moral implications of their actions, and both are cowed by the shame of actual evidence. One could argue that Mrs. Cheveley’s distress is not shame but fear of public disgrace, but the text suggests otherwise. When Mrs. Cheveley finds that she cannot remove the bracelet, she looks as though “a mask has fallen from her” – the mask of her beauty and her social graces, which conceals an inwardness she has previously denied. The brooch, then, is evidence not only of her crime but of the reality of that inwardness, the constellation of values that guides all actions, serious and trivial.