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 up the description. "It was the marvellous delicacy of the setting and the design that struck me. I don't believe its intrinsic value is so great, even with the emerald, but the art of it, the art of it! It makes the modern work seem absolutely pot-boiling; there were old masters in jewelry as well as in paint and stone."

"I think," Sonia continued, "the two gold dolphins that surround the centre stone must have been heraldic. I believe it was a sort of acrostic of a coat-of-arms. I've seen such pieces in Russia, and I know they were used in Spain."

"Oh, stop talking like a pair of antiquaries," Shorty interrupted. "You don't know anything about it, and you re missing the circus—just look at the freaks in this—salle à manger."

The great bare room did, in fact, present an extraordinary assortment of humanity. At the upper end, a long table accommodated fifteen or twenty priests, whose black garments made a dark spot in the otherwise bright hall. Next to them, a gaily dressed, chattering party of women and men, just arrived in their automobiles from the estates of Kerkonti and Merone. The 35