But though the glitter of the diamonds pleased her as it will every woman, the few words in his handwriting were more precious to her than the costly gems.
Can any one ever tell what her first love letter means to a young girl who is in love with the writer?
Leslie gazed at one line in Yorke's awful scrawl as a Moslem might regard a verse from the Koran, and not once or twice only did her sweet lips kiss the scrap of paper. Then she examined the pendant more minutely, and though her experience of jewelry was of a very limited character, she knew that the gift was an expensive one.
"It is too good, too grand for me," she said, and yet with a sensation of pleasure in its worth. "I should have been as pleased if he had sent me a bunch of flowers bought in the London streets. But, oh, how good of him! And, after all, it is not too grand for his wife. He would think nothing too rare, too costly for her. Oh, my love, my love! If I were only more worthy of you!"
She found a piece of ribbon and put the pendant on it, and hung it around her white throat, and the fire and glitter of the diamonds almost startled her.
"It is just as well that I may not wear it openly—yet," she said to herself with a soft, shy laugh. "I should feel as if every one was staring at me. I wonder whether I shall ever get used to wearing beautiful things like this? He would say 'Yes,' but I feel now as if I never should be able to do so without being conscious of my splendor. But I must hide you for the present, you beautiful thing," and she arranged the pendant so that it nestled over her heart, and buttoned her dress over it, and there it seemed to glow with a soft, consuming fire, as if it knew that it had come from the hand of the man she loved.
Several times during the day she stole up to her room and drew the pendant from its hiding-place, and looked at it with glistening eyes; and if Francis Lisle had not been blind to everything but his awful pictures, he could not but have been startled by the expression on her face after one of these visits.
But if her father was blind the children were not, and as they clustered around her they looked up at her, frank wonder in their wide-open orbs, and one mite lisped:
"What makth 'oo sthmile so, Mith Lethlie. Have 'oo been a dood girl, and got a penny diven 'oo?"