“I wonder why you dressed yourself as you did last night?” said he.
The suddenness of the words did not cause her to quail as the guilty wife quails—yes, under a properly managed lime-light. She did not even color. But then, of course, she was not a guilty wife.
She lay back on her chair and laughed.
He watched her—not eagerly, but pleasantly, admiringly.
“My dear Stephen, if you could understand why I dressed myself that way you would be able to give me a valuable hint as to where the connection lies between your mine and my toilet—I need such a hint, now, I can assure you.”
She was sitting up now looking at him with lovely laughing eyes. (After all, she was no guilty wife.)
“What, you can’t see the connection?” he said slowly. “You can sew over your dress about fifty thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds, and yet you don’t see the connection between the wearing of that dress and the development of a gold mine by your husband?”
“I think I see it now—something of a connection. But I don’t want any more diamonds; I don’t care if you take all that are sewed about the dress and throw them into the river. That’s how I feel this morning.”
“I heard some time ago of a woman who had something of your mood upon her one day. She had some excellent diamonds, and in one of her moods, she flung them into the river. She was a wife and she had a lover who disappointed her. The story reads very smoothly in verse.”
She laughed.