I sat looking at the girl with her towering crown of reddish-gold hair. She, in turn, was gazing at her own foolishly distorted reflection in the polished bowl of the chafing-dish from which I had just served her with capon a la reine. She sat there gazing at her reflected face, gazing at it with a sort of studious yet impersonal intentness. Then I saw her suddenly lean forward in her chair, still looking at the grotesque image of herself in the polished silver. I could not help noticing her quickly altering expression, the inarticulate gasp of her parted lips, the hand that went suddenly up to her throat. I saw the fingers feel around the base of the compactly slender neck, and the momentary look of stupor that once more swept over her face.
She ate a mouthful of capon, studiously, without speaking. Then she looked up at us again. It was then that her brother Benny for the first time noticed her change of color.
"What's wrong?" he demanded, his thin young face touched suddenly with anxiety.
The girl, when she finally answered him, spoke very quietly. But I could see what a struggle it was costing her.
"Now, Benny, I don't want any fuss," she said, almost under her breath. "I don't want either of you to get excited, for it can't do a bit of good. But my necklace is gone."
"Gone?" gasped Benny. "It can't be!"
"It's gone," she repeated, with her vacant eyes on me as her brother prodded and felt about her skirt, and then even shook out her crumpled opera cloak.
"Does this happen to be it?" I asked, with all the nonchalance at my command. And as I spoke I unwrapped the string of pearls with the pigeon-blood ruby and let them roll on the white damask that lay between us.
She looked at them without moving, her eyes wide with wonder. I could see the color come back into her face. It was quite reward enough to witness the relieving warmth return to those widened eyes, to bask in that lovely and liquid glance of gratitude.
"How," she asked a little weakly, as she reached over and took them up in her fingers, "how did you get them?"