Then the Duchesse came back, and Horatia rose. The Dowager had perhaps been rummaging in some obscure corner, for one of the feathers was very much awry. But she possessed an awful majesty, short, ludicrous, and (at the moment) amenable as she was.
"Here, ma fille, is something for you," she said, putting into Horatia's hands an old green leather case. "Open it!"
The bride did so. Inside, on a dark and shabby lining, a row of magnificent pearls made moonlight.
"O, Madame," gasped Horatia. "I could not! they are too..."
"Nonsense, child," said the old lady, pinching her arm. "You like them, I see. You will not see any finer at the Tuileries—not that you'll ever go there now. I always meant them for Armand's wife. They would look well in that hair of yours, too. There are earrings, but I could not put my hand on them. Try these on! They belonged to my sister, the Comtesse de Craon, who was guillotined in '93, and I did not recover them till the Restoration."
"Guillotined!" exclaimed Horatia, startled. How was it possible to speak about it in that matter-of-fact tone! And the pearls—in whose hands had they been—round whose neck...?
"Naturally," answered Madame de la Roche-Guyon calmly. "All my family were. I was in prison myself till Thermidor. Well, perhaps you would like Armand to put them on for you. You can tell him that you are to have the emeralds when—you understand perfectly well what I mean!"
(3)
Horatia wore the pearls, at her husband's request, for the family gathering on New Year's Night. She said afterwards that they gave her courage, as proving her an adopted member of the gens, but when, at the conclusion of her toilet, Armand had clasped them round her neck, she declared that she felt more anticipatory terrors than had ever their owner on the way to the guillotine.
"Very likely," said Armand, in high spirits, walking round her approvingly. "If my lamented great-aunt was like my grandmother I do not suppose that she was in the least afraid of La Veuve.... You look charming; I like that dress."