"Well, I might have done so," she said, with delicious archness; "but you provided against that, did you not?"
He did not understand for a moment, then he laughed.
"You got it all right?"
"Ah, yes," she said, with a little sigh of gratitude and content. "I wish you could have seen me when it came! I was standing beside Mr. Temple when the postman brought it, and I cried out—well, like a schoolgirl!"
He looked at her, wrapt in delight at her delight.
"It was a happy thought of mine, then?" he said.
"Yes, but why did you send me so grand a present," she said in a low voice. "Anything would have done; but that——." She laughed and colored. "It was too rich, too costly for such a simple person as I am!"
He laughed. So she thought the plain little locket rich and costly. What would she have considered the diamond pendant he had sent to Finetta? "God bless my darling! My modest pearl!" he thought.
"And you were pleased with it?" he said. "It occurred to me that you might like it; for a minute or two I feared that you might consider me conceited in sending it, that a ring——."
She shook her head.