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 that she had cleansed the lawn of all its colour, and made of it a platform of silver-grey, fit for fairies to dance on?

If Zuleika, as she paced the gravel path, had seen how transfigured—how nobly like the Tragic Muse—she was just now, she could not have gone on bothering the Duke for a keepsake of the tragedy that was to be.

She was still set on having his two studs. He was still firm in his refusal to misappropriate those heirlooms. In vain she pointed out to him that the pearls he meant, the white ones, no longer existed; that the pearls he was wearing were no more "entailed" than if he had got them yesterday. "And you actually did get them yesterday," she said. "And from me. And I want them back."

"You are ingenious," he admitted. "I, in my simple way, am but head of the Tanville-Tankerton family. Had you accepted my offer of marriage, you would have had the right to wear these two pearls during your life-time. I am very happy to die for you. But tamper with the property of my successor I cannot and will not. I am sorry," he added.

"Sorry!" echoed Zuleika. "Yes, and you were 'sorry' you couldn't dine with me to-night. But any little niggling scruple is more to you than I am. What old maids men are!" And viciously with her fan she struck one of the cloister pillars.