"Just what they themselves say. It's all IN them--and it
comes out. They breathe a tenderness--they have the
white glow of it. My dear," hissed Mrs. Guy in supreme
confidence and as she buttoned her glove--"they're
things of love!"
"Oh!" our young woman vaguely exclaimed.
"They're things of passion!"
"Mercy!" she gasped, turning short off. But these words
remained, though indeed their help was scarce needed,
Charlotte being in private face to face with a new light,
as she by this time felt she must call it, on the dear dead
kind colourless lady whose career had turned so sharp
a corner in the middle. The pearls had quite taken their
place as a revelation. She might have received them for
nothing--admit that; but she couldn't have kept them so
long and so unprofitably hidden, couldn't have enjoyed
them only in secret, for nothing; and she had mixed
them in her reliquary with false things in order to put
curiosity and detection off the scent. Over this strange
fact poor Charlotte interminably mused: it became
more touching, more attaching for her than she could
now confide to any ear. How bad or how happy--in the
sophisticated sense of Mrs. Guy and the young man at
the Temple--the effaced Miss Bradshaw must have been
to have had to be so mute! The little governess at Bleet
put on the necklace now in secret sessions; she wore
it sometimes under her dress; she came to feel verily a
27
HYLAND
