“I wouldn’t spend so much time over them, my dears,” said Mrs Barclay, “only I think you like seeing ’em. There, now, there’s only these three lots to open.”
She took a wash-leather bag and opened it, to pour out some rough-looking crystals into her hand, as if it had been grain at a corn-market.
“Rough diamonds, dear,” she said to Cora; and, pouring them back, she retied the bag, and took the other and served it the same. “Seed pearls, those are, and worth more than you’d think.”
This bag was also retied and placed in the safe, nothing being left but the canvas packet.
“Ah!” said Mrs Barclay, “I always mean to get a case made for this lot, every time I see them. They’re not much good, but it would set them off.”
As she spoke she untied the bag, turned it over, and, taking hold of the bottom, shook out on the table a necklet, cross, tiara, and pair of bracelets, which tinkled as they fell on the table.
“You’ll spoil them,” said Cora, taking up the tiara admiringly.
“Spoil them? Not I, my dear. You couldn’t spoil them.”
“But they are very beautiful,” said Cora, taking up the cross by the little ring at the top. “Look, Claire dear. Why, I—”
Claire turned her eyes upon them slowly, and then her countenance changed, and she uttered a cry: