"A nobody?" Charlotte risked.
"Not a nobody to whom somebody--well, not a nobody
with diamonds. It isn't all worth, this trash, five pounds."
There was something in the old gewgaws that spoke
to her, and she continued to turn them over. "They're
relics. I think they have their melancholy and even their
dignity."
Arthur observed another pause. "Do you care (318) for
them?" he then asked. "I mean," he promptly added,
"as a souvenir."
"Of you?" Charlotte threw off.
"Of me? What have I to do with it? Of your poor dead
aunt who was so kind to you," he said with virtuous
sternness.
"Well, I'd rather have them than nothing."
"Then please take them," he returned in a tone of relief
which expressed somehow more of the eager than of
the gracious.
"Thank you." Charlotte lifted two or three objects up and
set them down again. Though they were lighter than
the materials they imitated they were so much more
extravagant that they struck her in truth as rather an
awkward heritage, to which she might have preferred
even a matchbox or a penwiper. They were indeed
6
HYLAND
