The Indiscretion of the Duchess Part 15

"You think the same still?" she retorted quickly.

"That is no excuse for having said it," I returned. "It was not my affair."

"It is n.o.body's affair, I suppose, but mine."

"Unless you allow it to be," said I. I could not endure the desolation her words and tone implied.

She looked at me curiously.

"I don't understand," she said in a fretfully weary tone, "how you come to be mixed up in it at all."

"It's a long story." Then I went on abruptly: "You thought it was someone else that had entered."

"Well, if I did?"

"Someone returning," said I stepping up to the table opposite her.

"What then?" she asked, but wearily and not in the defiant manner of the morning.

"Mme. Delha.s.se perhaps, or perhaps the Duke of Saint-Maclou?"

Marie Delha.s.se made no answer. She sat with her elbows on the table, and her chin resting on the support of her clenched hands; her lids drooped over her eyes; and I could not see the expression of her glance, which was, nevertheless, upon me.

"Well, well," I continued, "we needn't talk about him. Have you been doing some shopping?" And I pointed to the red leathern box.

For full half a minute she sat, without speech or movement. Then she said in answer to my question, which she could not take as an idle one:

"Yes, I have been doing some bargaining."

"Is that the result?"

Again she paused long before she answered.

"That," said she, "is a trifle--thrown in."

"To bind the bargain?" I suggested.

"Yes, Mr. Aycon--to bind the bargain."

"Is it allowed to look?"

"I think everything must be allowed to you. You would be so surprised if it were not."

I understood that she was aiming a satirical remark at me: I did not mind that; she had better flay me alive than sit and cry.

"Then I may open the box?"

"The key is in it."

I drew the box across, and I took a chair that stood by. I turned the key of the box. A glance showed me Marie's drooped lids half raised and her eyes fixed on my face.

I opened the box: there lay in it, in sparkling coil on the blue velvet, a magnificent diamond necklace; one great stone formed a pendent, and it was on this stone that I fixed my regard. I took it up and looked at it closely; then I examined the necklace itself. Marie's eyes followed my every motion.

"You like these trinkets?" I asked.

"Yes," said she, in that tone in which "yes" is stronger than a thousand words of rapture; and the depths of her eyes caught fire from the stones, and gleamed.

"But you know nothing about them," I pursued composedly.

"I suppose they are valuable," said she, making an effort after _nonchalance_.

"They have some value," I conceded, smiling. "But I mean about their history."

"They are bought, I suppose--bought and sold."

"I happen to know just a little about such things. In fact, I have a book at home in which there is a picture of this necklace. It is known as the Cardinal's Necklace. The stones were collected by Cardinal Armand de Saint-Maclou, Archbishop of Caen, some thirty years ago. They were set by Lebeau of Paris, on the order of the cardinal, and were left by him to his nephew, our friend the duke. Since his marriage, the d.u.c.h.ess has of course worn them."

All this I said in a most matter-of-fact tone.

"Do you mean that they belong to her?" asked Marie, with a sudden lift of her eyes.

"I don't know. Strictly, I should think not," said I impa.s.sively.

Marie Delha.s.se stretched out her hand and began to finger the stones.

"She wore them, did she?"

"Certainly."

"Ah! I supposed they had just been bought." And she took her fingers off them.

"It would take a large sum to do that--to buy them _en bloc_," I observed.

"How much?"

"Oh, I don't know! The market varies so much: perhaps a million francs, perhaps more. You can't tell how much people will give for such things."

"No, it is difficult," she a.s.sented, again fingering the necklace, "to say what people will give for them."

I leaned back in my chair. There was a pause. Then her eyes suddenly met mine again, and she exclaimed defiantly:

"Oh, you know very well what it means! What's the good of fencing about it?"

"Yes, I know what it means," said I. "When have you promised to go?"

"To-morrow," she answered.

"Because of this thing?" and I pointed to the necklace.