Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/68

60 as big as eggs. Leave them with me,' Mrs. Guy continued—'they'll inspire me. Good-night.'

The next morning she was in fact—yet very strangely—inspired. 'Yes, I'll do Rowena. But I don't, my dear, understand.'

'Understand what?'

Mrs. Guy gave a very lighted stare. 'How you come to have such things.'

Poor Charlotte smiled. 'By inheritance.'

'Family jewels?'

'They belonged to my aunt, who died some months ago. She was on the stage a few years in early life, and these are a part of her trappings.'

'She left them to you?'

'No; my cousin, her stepson, who naturally has no use for them, gave them to me for remembrance of her. She was a dear kind thing, always so nice to me, and I was fond of her.'

Mrs. Guy had listened with visible interest. 'But it's he who must be a dear kind thing!'

Charlotte wondered. 'You think so?'

'Is he,' her friend went on, 'also "always so nice" to you?'

The girl, at this, face to face there with the brilliant visitor in the deserted breakfast-room, took a deeper sounding. 'What is it?'

'Don't you know?'

Something came over her. 'The pearls?' But the question fainted on her lips.

'Doesn't he know?'

Charlotte found herself flushing. 'They're not paste?'

'Haven't you looked at them?'

She was conscious of two kinds of embarrassment. 'You have?'

'Very carefully.'

'And they're real?'

Mrs. Guy became slightly mystifying and returned for all