Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/77

Rh 'And if the people say they're real?'

He hesitated—then had his strangest manner. 'They won't say it! They shan't!'

There was something in the way he brought it out that deprived poor Charlotte, as she was perfectly aware, of any manner at all. 'Oh!' she simply sounded, as she had sounded for her last word to Mrs. Guy; and, within a minute, without more conversation, she had taken her departure.

A fortnight later she received a communication from him, and towards the end of the season one of the entertainments in Eaton Square was graced by the presence of Mrs. Guy. Charlotte was not at dinner, but she came down afterwards, and this guest, on seeing her, abandoned a very beautiful young man on purpose to cross and speak to her. The guest had on a lovely necklace and had apparently not lost her habit of overflowing with the pride of such ornaments.

'Do you see?' She was in high joy.

They were indeed splendid pearls—so far as poor Charlotte could feel that she knew, after what had come and gone, about such mysteries. Charlotte had a sickly smile. 'They're almost as fine as Arthur's.'

'Almost? Where, my dear, are your eyes? They are "Arthur's!"' After which, to meet the flood of crimson that accompanied her young friend's start: 'I tracked them—after your folly, and, by miraculous luck, recognised them in the Bond Street window to which he had disposed of them.'

'Disposed of them?' the girl gasped. 'He wrote me that I had insulted his mother and that the people had shown him he was right—had pronounced them utter paste.'

Mrs. Guy gave a stare. 'Ah, I told you he wouldn't bear it! No. But I had, I assure you,' she wound up, 'to drive my bargain!'

Charlotte scarce heard or saw; she was full of her private wrong. 'He wrote me,' she panted, 'that he had smashed them.'