“Mr. Forsyth,” she said, laying a roll of bank-notes on the counter, “I regret our little transaction yesterday. I prefer to keep the cross myself.”
“Well—a—hem!—a bargain’s a bargain, you know.”
“Oh, don’t talk to me about ‘bargains’! we’re old acquaintances. I want that cross. I must have it.”
The jeweler colored, and coughed, and objected. But madame was obstinate. Finally, as they were “old acquaintances,” and as madame’s husband was a lawyer, and as he hadn’t told her anywhere near the full value of the cross, he yielded—on one condition—that it should remain a few days longer in his show-case. It added greatly to the display there, especially since a card had been attached to it, reading thus:
ANTIQUE CROSS,
Formerly owned by the
EMPRESS EUGENIE,
Sold by her in her flight from Paris, to defray the expenses of the journey.
Madame agreed to the condition, thinking:
“If Doctor Leblanc cares anything for his sister he won’t be gaping at jewelers’ windows for some time to come. (Doubtful if she recovers. It’s some fever or other she must have caught on board that emigrant ship. And the children! bless me, I must go the very next thing to Doctor Smith and see if he thinks there’s any danger.) And then if he shouldn’t happen to ask for it, or make any fuss about it, why, I can wear it myself, and everybody in town will suppose it has once been worn by Eugenie!”
A week from that morning little Julie came back from her wanderings, looked up into the face bending over her, and knew it for the first time.
“C’est lui!”[6] she whispered, smiling faintly, closed her weary eyes and fell into a sweet slumber.
“Thank God! she is going to live.”