“I don’t know. You don’t seem so—so—chummy as you do sometimes.”
“Chummy? I did not know I had been quite that,” she said with a touch of coldness that she could not keep from her tones.
“Now I know you have got it in for me somehow.”
Elizabeth said nothing as Hortense came back in the room with the orchid pin which she handed to Billy.
“My, it’s a peach!” he declared. He examined it with great interest. “It is as near like Vi Thomas’ as can be. Hers, of course, had Tiffany’s mark on the back and a date, as I remember, some date that meant something to her and her husband.
“Mine just has the name Felix loves to call me, ‘Pet.’ It sounds awfully silly and sentimental, but he would have it on.”
“Can’t I see it?” asked Elizabeth, wishing in her heart she had a magnifying glass handy, feeling sure there would be marks of other things to be disclosed. She noticed that the gold mounting back of the pin was slightly concave. “No doubt Josie will attach much importance to that,” she said to herself.
“You promised some day to show me your original Rembrandt etching,” she said to Hortense. “I have never seen one.”
“Have you an original Rembrandt?” asked Billy. “You never told me. I’d certainly like to see it. The Thomases had a crackerjack of a Rembrandt. Of course that was lifted too when the orchid pin was.”
“Heavens! what luck. Those Thomases seem to be perfect Jonahs,” laughed Hortense. Elizabeth thought she detected a little sharp note in her laugh.