“Shhhh! Not so loud! Yes, that is just it. There I stood trying it in the light, feasting on it, when a voice said behind me, a voice that made my hair creep at the roots, ‘A very unsafe stone to smuggle, young lady!’ And there, just inside my door, stood the yellow hag. She had stolen down, I suppose, to nose among my luggage a bit. I could have shaken her—I almost did try it.
“We stood staring at each other; it was the second battle of the kind between us on board that ship. I realized she had rather the upper hand in this one. I never saw such envy and greed and cruelty in a human face, as she ogled that stone.
“It seemed to intoxicate her—she was drunk to get her hands on it—and she had enough of her own, too. So, once more, I had to think as fast as I could, for I knew that this time she would be relentless.
“‘No, I shan’t smuggle it,’ I said, in answer to her look.
“‘You pay duty—a thousand, two thousand dollars!’ she gasped at me, still keeping her eyes on the stone, flashing there in the light. ‘Given to you,’ she almost hissed, ‘by some loving father whose child you guided into the paths of wisdom? Oh, I know you, you lying huzzy! It’s mine!’ she cried, like a baby crying for the moon, ‘it’s mine! You—you stole it from me!’”
She paused, at the memory of the scene, and Durkin stirred uneasily on the seat.
“What made the fool say that?” he demanded.
“Why, she meant that she could claim it, and intended to claim it, insinuating that she would see that it was declared at the wharf, if I kept it, and arguing that I might as well lose it quietly to her, as to the Treasury officers. I knew in a flash, then, that she didn’t know what the Blue Pear was. I closed the little gun-metal case with a snap. Then I put it, Blue Pear and all, in her hand. She turned white, and asked me what I meant.
“‘I am going to give it to you—for a while, at least,’ I said, as coolly as I could, making a virtue, of course, of what I knew was going to be a necessity.
“She looked at me open-mouthed. Then she tore open the case, looked at the stone, weighed it in her fingers, gasped a little, held it to the light again, and turned and looked at me still once more.