“Tchut!—nonsense!” she replied, brusquely. “It is nothing to make a fuss about. Not but what,” she added, “it is a fine jewel in its way. It was given to me by a princess, and those eight emeralds are such as you won’t see often. Put it on to-night, and let Tom see it; it will please him, dear boy. And, Kitty, whenever you wear it let it remind you, my love, of your promise to him, and all you and I have talked about.”
“It shall—it shall!” I replied, earnestly, “though I shall not need any reminding, dear Mrs. Smith.”
The buggy returned late that evening from Narraporwidgee, and I did not meet my parents and Tom until the gong summoned us all to the dining-room. Here I presented myself in my best black silk dress that Tom liked so much, the bosom of which, fitting to me like a soft glove, without a wrinkle or any kind of trimming, made what I considered the most effective background for my chain and cross, which in lamplight glittered in the most amazing manner. I had been standing before my looking-glass to admire myself for about a quarter of an hour beforehand, waving a candle backwards and forwards in front of me; and never till now did I know what fire could burn in the depths of pure emeralds. Even that mass of well-cut and perfect little diamonds, in themselves “enemies of mankind,” as Mr. Ruskin calls them, of the most “destructive” character, could not overpower the intense glow and lustre of mine. My unwonted magnificence caught the attention of everybody, down to the sedate butler who waited at table, as soon as I approached the light. Mrs. Smith looked at me in complacent triumph; her husband, whose life was spent in looking at her, withdrew his gaze from that object for a second, and then returned it with extra interest. Mother regarded me with a startled surprise; father with an astonished “Hallo, Kitty!” and Tom with beaming satisfaction.
“That cross hasn’t seen the light for a dozen years at least, Kitty,” said Tom. “Have you given it to Kitty, mother?”
“Yes, my dear; it is a little keepsake Kitty has been good enough to accept,” she replied demurely. Whereupon he stooped over her chair and kissed her.
Mother called me round the table, and, taking the jewel in her hand, examined it closely, and as she did so the colour rose in her pale face. “It is much too valuable for a young girl like Kitty,” she said, turning troubled eyes to Mrs. Smith. “Why, these stones must be quite priceless.”
“They are very fair stones,” our hostess replied coolly, beginning to ladle out the soup; “but they are not at all too good for Kitty. It gives me great pleasure to see her wearing them; they will be something to remind her of old friends when she is far away from us.”
“She is so very, very careless,” began mother again; but here I broke in to ask her indignantly if she supposed I should be careless of such a thing as that?
“I will give you a little Chubb to keep it in, Kitty,” said father, with moist eyes. “I don’t think Mrs. Smith need be afraid of it’s not being well taken care of; the child is not likely to have many such treasures of her own. But I do think with Mary, Mrs. Smith, that it is too valuable to”—father hesitated and cleared his throat—“to be taken out of the family, you know.”
Poor father and mother! they thought Mrs. Smith had been making over Tom’s inheritance to me, thereby implying that she regarded me as his future wife. They knew nothing of the existence of that treasure of diamonds in the Indian cabinet, compared with which this was almost a trifle. Tom, who guessed what we had been about during the afternoon, looked across at me significantly when father spoke, and then we both looked at our plates, and I blushed furiously.