“He didn’t say. And it had initials behind it too just like mine.”
“How very curious! The same initials?”
“Oh, I don’t know! I shouldn’t think they were the same.”
“I thought he said they were the same.”
“Oh, no! He wanted to see the back of the pendant; but I wouldn’t let him.”
“Why not?”
“Well, you see, Mr. Rayner, I—I thought, if he still went on thinking they were real, as I believe he did, and he were to find out by the initials who gave it me, why—why, he would think you must be mad, Mr. Rayner, to give diamonds to a governess!” said I, laughing. “Fifteen hundred pounds! Why, it would be about thirty-eight years’ salary!”
Mr. Rayner laughed too.
“That was very sharp of you,” he said. “If he had been as sharp as you, he would have got at it, and found out the initials, if he really wanted to know them.”
“But I didn’t wear my pendant again.”