can't allow you to leave the house under the impression
that my stepmother was at ANY time of her life the sort
of person to allow herself to be approached--"
"With pearl necklaces and that sort of thing?" Arthur had
made for her somehow the difficulty that she couldn't
show him she understood him without seeming pert.
It at any rate only added to his own gravity. "That sort of
thing, exactly."
"I didn't think when I spoke this morning--but I see what
you mean."
"I mean that she was beyond reproach," said Arthur
Prime.
"A hundred times yes."
"Therefore if she couldn't, out of her slender gains, ever
have paid for a row of pearls--"
"She couldn't, in that atmosphere, ever properly have
had one? Of course she couldn't. I've seen perfectly
since our talk," Charlotte went on, "that that string of
beads isn't even as an imitation very good. The little
clasp itself doesn't seem even gold. With false pearls, I
suppose," the girl mused, "it naturally wouldn't be."
"The whole thing's rotten paste," her companion returned
as if to have done with it. "If it were NOT, and she had
kept it all these years hidden--"
11
HYLAND
