David said nothing, but a slow, odd smile curled his lips without reaching those level, narrowed eyes of his.
“What are you looking at me like that for?” Pearl screamed. “I won’t have you looking at me like that! Stop it!”
Slowly, his eyes not leaving Pearl’s face for a moment, David thrust his right hand into his pocket. When he withdrew it, something lay on his palm—a narrow bar of filigreed white gold, set with a small, square-cut diamond. Still without speaking, he extended his hand slowly toward Pearl, but she drew back, her eyes popping with surprise and—yes, Sally was sure of it—fear.
“Where did you get that?” she gasped.
“Do you really want me to tell you?” David spoke at last, his voice queer and hard.
“No!” Pearl shuddered. “No! Does she—does she know?”
“No, she was telling the truth when she said that she hadn’t seen the pin,” David answered, flipping the pin contemptuously to the kitchen table. “But next time I think you’d better put it away in your own room. And Pearl, you really must try to overcome this absentmindedness of yours. It may get you into trouble sometime.”
Pearl shivered, seemed to shrink visibly under her fussy pink georgette dress.
“Oh!” she wailed suddenly, her face crumpling up in a spasm of weeping. “You’ll hate me now! And you used to like me, before she came! You—oh, I hate you! Quit looking at me like that!”
“Hadn’t you better go back to church?” David suggested mildly. “Tell your mother you found your pin just where you’d left it,” that contemptuous smile deepening on his lips.