Miss Minerva examined the coral pendant first. "The dear little thing!" she murmured. "She must think a lot of you to have parted with this!" Then she laid it down and took up the bracelet. "Gracious!" she exclaimed immediately, letting it fall and then picking it up again. "Am I going crazy, or are my eyes deceiving me?" She turned it over and over.
"What's the matter?" cried both girls at once.
"Matter?" cried Miss Minerva. "Why, just this: that bracelet is exactly like one I've had put away for years!" The girls stared at her incredulously. "I'll get it this minute and prove it!" And she hurried out of the room.
While she was gone they examined the bracelet more closely than they had yet done. It consisted of two thin rims of silver, joined by silver filigree-work, a quarter of an inch wide. Here and there, at intervals in the filigree, and forming part of the pattern, were several strange characters, looking, as Marcia declared, like those on the receipt from a Chinese laundry. The workmanship was unusually delicate and beautiful.
In five minutes Miss Minerva was back, flushed and disheveled, from a hunt through several bureau-drawers and boxes.
"I couldn't find it at first," she panted. "In Northam I used to be able to lay my hand on anything I wanted, at an instant's notice, but in this apartment!" She heaved a resigned sigh and laid something beside the bracelet on the table.
It was the exact duplicate—in every last detail! Even the complicated characters were identical! The three stared at the trinkets in an expressive silence. Not for a moment could it be doubted that these two bracelets were once a pair. They were so unusual that it was impossible there could be others like them. This astonishing fact was patent to them all.
"Aunt Minerva, where did you get yours?" breathed Marcia, at last.
"Why, that's easily explained," answered Miss Brett. "Your father brought it to me about ten or twelve years ago, after one of his voyages. He said that a Chinese sailor in Hong-Kong had offered to sell it to him for a small sum, and seeing it was a rather unique little trinket, he bought it and brought it home to me. I never wear such things, however. Jewelry never did appeal to me, and bracelets, particularly, always seemed a nuisance. So I put it away intending to give it to you some day, Marcia. And after a while I actually forgot all about it—till to-night!"