“Have any of the ladies seen it yet, Miss Christie?”
“No; and, for fear they should make the same mistake that you have made, I shall not let them,” said I.
And I had raised my hands to take it off when Mrs. Cunningham and another lady came into the conservatory. The elder lady’s eyes fell upon the unlucky trinket at once.
“What are you taking that off for, my dear? It is just what you want round the throat.”
“Because I have been teased about wearing diamonds, and they are only sham ones; and I don’t want to be teased any more,” said I rather tremulously.
“Never mind Tom, my dear. Don’t take off your pretty pendant for him. They are certainly very like, though,” said she, looking first at them and then into my face. “Here, put them on again and snap your fingers at Tom.”
I raised the velvet obediently, and the gentleman called Tom came softly behind me and took the ends from my trembling fingers, and fastened them himself round my throat again. He first pretended that he had not got them straight, though, and held the velvet a little way from me to try to look at the back of the pendant. But I was prepared for that; and I put my hand round it, as if fearing it might fall, and would not let him see the initials.
After this first experience of the sensation caused by my one ornament, I watched rather curiously its effect upon the rest of the party, as some of them strolled into the conservatory, and when I met the others in the drawing-room and in the general gathering at dinner. Every one looked at me, the one stranger, a good deal, of course; but I noticed that, while my pendant attracted the attention of the ladies, the gentlemen looked more at me myself, and were not scandalized by my unlucky ornament. Sir Jonas, who was a kind, gray-haired gentleman, and looked nearly old enough to be Lady Mills’s father, took me in to dinner; and, although he did not talk much, he encouraged me to chatter to him, and to tell him all about the school-treat, and tried to make me drink a great deal more wine than I wanted.
After dinner, when I was in the drawing-room with the ladies, some of them drew me on to a sofa and pulled me about and petted me just as if I had been a child, and asked me a number of questions about my life at the Alders and “that handsome Mr. Rayner.”
“And is it true that he is such a dreadfully wicked man, Miss Christie?” said one.