"There is nothing else half as pretty or quaint," she said. "I think this bit of history makes it all the more interesting."
Loria did not look again at the serpent glittering on its black velvet cushion, but, having hesitated for a barely perceptible space, he abruptly ordered the jeweler to send the belt to his hotel, where it would be paid for on delivery. Kate decided that, as she was in such a vein of luck, she would have the watch she fancied, and keep the Marchese while she made the purchase. Half maliciously she said to the shopkeeper: "I suppose this pretty thing has no such story as the other?"
"Rather strangely, madame has chosen another heirloom disposed of by the same family," returned the man, as he placed the old blue-enameled watch in a box filled with pink cotton. It seemed as if Fate persisted in linking them with these Dalahaides!
Loria did not speak, but Kate's observant eyes saw that the gloved hand nearest her closed tightly on the stick it held. A moment later she had paid for her purchase, and they were out in the street again.
"You look very down," she remarked. "I believe you must have been losing a lot at Monte, and that a little sympathy and good advice would do you good. I meant to go to Rumpelmayer's presently, but suppose we go now and have tea together?"
Neither he nor she had said in so many words that there was to be a bargain between them; but Loria understood what the suggestion of a tête-à-tête at Rumpelmayer's meant, and augured well of Kate's genuine good-will, by her readiness to give the opportunity he wanted.
She was curious, he labouring under suppressed excitement, and they did not speak much as they walked. At the confectioner's Loria chose a table in a corner, far from the few early customers who had already arrived. It was not yet four o'clock, and the rooms would not begin to be crowded for half an hour. In that time much could be said, much, perhaps, planned for the future.