prompt event, for, whether or no paste entered into
the composition of the ornament in question, Charlotte
shrank from the temerity of dispatching it to town by
post. Mrs. Guy was thus disappointed of the hope
of seeing the business settled--"by return," she had
seemed to expect--before the end of the revels. The
revels, moreover, rising to a frantic pitch, pressed for
all her attention, and it was at last only in the general
confusion of leave-taking that she made, parenthetically,
a dash at the person in the whole company with whom
her contact had been most interesting.
"Come, what will you take for them?"
"The pearls? Ah, you'll have to treat with my cousin."
Mrs. Guy, with quick intensity, lent herself. "Where then
does he live?"
"In chambers in the Temple. You can find him."
"But what's the use, if YOU do neither one thing nor the
other?"
"Oh I SHALL do the 'other,' " Charlotte said: "I'm only
waiting till I go up. You want them so awfully?" She
curiously, solemnly again, sounded her.
"I'm dying for them. There's a special charm in them--I
don't know what it is: they tell so their history."
"But what do you know of that?"
26
HYLAND
