Page:Hope-indiscretions of duchess.djvu/88

76 All this I said in a most matter-of-fact tone.

“Do you mean that they belong to her?” asked Marie, with a sudden lift of her eyes.

“I don’t know. Strictly, I should think not,” said I impassively.

Marie Delhasse stretched out her hand and began to finger the stones.

“She wore them, did she?”

“Certainly.”

“Ah! I supposed they had just been bought.” And she took her fingers off them.

“It would take a large sum to do that—to buy them en bloc,” I observed.

“How much?”

“Oh, I don’t know! The market varies so much: perhaps a million francs, perhaps more. You can’t tell how much people will give for such things.”

“No, it is difficult,” she assented, again fingering the necklace, “to say what people will give for them.”

I leaned back in my chair. There was a pause. Then her eyes suddenly met mine again, and she exclaimed defiantly:

“Oh, you know very well what it means! What’s the good of fencing about it?”

“Yes, I know what it means,” said I. “When have you promised to go?”

“To-morrow,” she answered.

“Because of this thing?” and I pointed to the necklace.

“Because of—— How dare you ask me such questions!”

I rose from my seat and bowed.