Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/74

66 'Then he won't believe you—as he so hates to. He'll stick to his judgment and maintain his gift, and we shall have the darlings back!' With which reviving assurance Mrs. Guy kissed for good-night.

She was not, however, to be gratified or justified by any prompt event, for, whether or no paste entered into the composition of the ornament in question, Charlotte shrank from the temerity of despatching it to town by post. Mrs. Guy was thus disappointed of the hope of seeing the business settled—'by return,' she had seemed to expect—before the end of the revels. The revels, moreover, rising to a frantic pitch, pressed for all her attention, and it was at last only in the general confusion of leave-taking that she made, parenthetically, a dash at her young friend.

'Come, what will you take for them?'

'The pearls? Ah, you'll have to treat with my cousin.'

Mrs. Guy, with quick intensity, lent herself. 'Where then does he live?'

'In chambers in the Temple. You can find him.'

'But what's the use, if you do neither one thing nor the other?'

'Oh, I shall do the "other,"' Charlotte said; 'I'm only waiting till I go up. You want them so awfully?' She curiously, solemnly again, sounded her.

'I'm dying for them. There's a special charm in them—I don't know what it is: they tell so their history.'

'But what do you know of that?'

'Just what they themselves say. It's all in them—and it comes out. They breathe a tenderness—they have the white glow of it. My dear,' hissed Mrs. Guy in supreme confidence and as she buttoned her glove—'they're things of love!'

'Oh!' our young woman vaguely exclaimed.

'They're things of passion!'

'Mercy!' she gasped, turning short off. But these words