"After all, you know, Rosanne, I'm the married woman, and if there was a doubt I should have the benefit of it before a mere girl. Besides, I'm sure it did you good to see, for once, what it feels like to be a wall-flower."
Rosanne gave her a look that quenched her merriment, and, she declared, made her feel queer all the evening; and when, in the dressing-room later, she tried to make it up with Rosanne, she was coldly snubbed. She then angrily remarked that it was the last time she would chaperon a jealous and bad-tempered girl to a dance, and left the sisters to go home with another married friend.
The next day her prize Pom, which, because she had no child, she foolishly adored, disappeared and was never seen again; and a few days later her husband fell very ill of pneumonia. On the day of the biggest race-meeting of the season, he was not expected to live, and on the night of the club ball he had a serious relapse, so that Violet Valpy, who adored racing and dancing, missed both these important fixtures. In the meantime, Major Satchwell was thrown from his horse and broke a leg.
Of course it was foolish, even blasphemous, to point any connection between Rosanne and these things—Mrs. Ozanne said so to herself ten times an hour—but, in their procedure, there was such a striking similarity to all Rosanne's "quarrel-cases," that the poor woman could not help adding them to the black list. Just as she could not help observing that, after the three events, Rosanne cheered up wonderfully and came out of the gloomy abstraction which always enveloped her when she was suffering from annoyance at the hands of others and left her when the offence had been mysteriously expiated by the offenders. Mrs. Ozanne was indeed deeply troubled. The disappearance of the Pom was bad enough; but, after all, George Valpy had nearly died, while poor Everard Satchwell would limp for life. It had once been supposed that he and Rosanne were fond of each other and might make a match of it. Mrs. Ozanne herself had believed that the girl liked him more than a little; but evidently this was not so, or—the worried woman did not finish the thought, even in her own mind, which was now busy with further problems connected with her beautiful, dark daughter.
Rosanne had always shown a great love for jewels. As a child, coloured stones were most popular with her, but since she grew up she had transferred her passion to diamonds, and, though her mother pointed out that such jewels were not altogether suitable to a young girl, she had gradually acquired quite a number of them and wore them with extraordinary keenness of pleasure. Some she had obtained in exchange for jewels that had been gifts from her mother or birthday presents from old friends of the family, her devouring passion for the white, sparkling stones apparently burning up all sentimental values. Even a string of beautiful pearls—one of two necklaces John Ozanne had invested his first savings in for his twin daughters—had gone by the board in exchange for a couple of splendid single-stone rings. An emerald pendant that had come from Mrs. Ozanne's side of the family, and been given to Rosanne on her seventeenth birthday, had been parted with also, to the mother's intense chagrin, Rosanne having thrown it into a collection of jewels which she exchanged, with an additional sum of money, for a little neck-circlet of small but very perfect stones that was the surprise and envy of all her girl friends.
She possessed, also, a fine pendant and several brooches, and was, moreover, constantly adding to her stock. It was her mother's belief that most of her generous allowance of pocket-money went in this direction, and more than once she expostulated with her daughter on the subject. But, as may have been already guessed, Rosanne was not made of malleable clay, or the mother's hands of the iron that moulds destinies. So the strange, dark daughter continued to do as she chose in the matter of jewels and, indeed, every other matter.
Not the least of the reasons for Mrs. Ozanne's disapproval of her daughter's jewel transactions was the fact that they took the girl into all sorts of places and among odd, mean people. She was hand and glove with every Jew and Gentile diamond-dealer in the place, but she also knew a number of other dealers of whom reputable dealers took no cognizance, and who dwelt behind queer, dingy shops whose windows displayed little, and where business was carried on in some gloomy inner room. Certainly, Mrs. Ozanne neither guessed at the existence of such people nor her daughter's acquaintance with them. It was enough for the poor woman that the sight of Rosanne sauntering in and out of jeweller's shops, leaning over counters, peering at fine stones or holding them up to the light, was a well-known one in Kimberley, and that many people gossiped about the scandal of such proceedings and blamed Mrs. Ozanne for letting the headstrong girl do these things.
However, it was not the thought of people's criticism on this point that was now troubling Mrs. Ozanne, but a matter far more disquieting. She had begun to realize that Rosanne, though she had long since exchanged away all her earlier jewels for diamonds, was still increasing her stock of the latter in a way that could not possibly be accounted for by her dress allowance; for she was fond of clothes, and her reputation as the best-dressed girl in Kimberley cost heavily. But even if she had spent the whole year's allowance in lump at the jewellers', it would not have paid for the beautiful stones she had lately displayed.
On the night of the club ball, for instance, in a room packed with pretty women beautifully gowned and jewelled, Rosanne blazed forth, a radiant figure that put everyone else in the shade. In a particularly rare golden-red shade of orange tulle, her faultless shoulders quite bare, her long throat and small dark head superbly held and ablaze with jewels, she was a vision of fire. She looked like a single flame that had become detached from some great conflagration and was swaying and dancing through the world alone. She shone and sparkled and flickered, and was the cynosure of all eyes. Mrs. Ozanne had never been so proud of her—and so perturbed. For where had that new diamond spray of maidenhair fern come from, that shone so gloriously against the glossy bands and curls of dark hair; and whence the single stone, that, like a great dewdrop, hung on her breast, suspended by a platinum chain so fine as to be almost invisible? Other people were asking these questions also, and once the distracted mother, lingering in a cool corner of the balcony while her daughters were dancing, heard the voice of an acquaintance saying acidly:
"What a fool the mother is! She must be ruining herself to buy that girl diamonds to trick herself out in—like a peacock!"