"Doesn't HE know?"
Charlotte found herself flushing. "They're NOT paste?"
"Haven't you looked at them?"
She was conscious of two kinds of embarrassment.
"YOU have?"
"Very carefully."
"And they're real?"
Mrs. Guy became slightly mystifying and returned for
all answer: "Come again, when you've done with the
children, to my room."
Our young woman found she had done with the children
that morning so promptly as to reveal to them a new
joy, and when she reappeared before Mrs. Guy this lady
had already encircled a plump white throat with the only
ornament, surely, in all the late Mrs. Prime's--the effaced
Miss Bradshaw's--collection, in the least qualified to raise
a question. If Charlotte had never yet once, before the
glass, tied the string of pearls about her own neck, this
was because she had been capable of no such stoop
to approved "imitation"; but she had now only to look
at Mrs. Guy to see that, so disposed, the ambiguous
objects might have passed for frank originals. "What in
the world have you done to them?"
"Only handled them, understood them, admired them
17
HYLAND
