“What—what—does it mean?” she said, in a low sort of gasp.
I just looked at them and shook my head. But I felt a cold sinking in that part of my organism where my courage is usually screwed to the sticking-place.
“Are they real, do you think?” she said again, and she took the evening paper and poured them out on it.
Spread out that way, they looked most awfully numerous and rich. There must have been more than a hundred of them of different sizes, and shaking around on the surface of the paper made them shine and sparkle like stars.
“It’s a fortune, Cassius,” she said, almost in a whisper; “it’s a fortune in diamonds. Why did she leave them?”
“Didn’t she say they were for Amelia?” I said, in a hollow tone.
“Yes; but who is Amelia? How will we ever find her? What shall we do? It’s too awful!”
We stood opposite one another with the paper between us, and tried to think. In the lamplight the diamonds winked at us with what seemed human malice. I turned round and picked up the bag they had come from, looked vaguely into it, and shook it. A last stone fell out on the paper, quite a large one, and added itself to the pile.
“Why did she leave them here?” Daisy moaned. “What did she bother us for? Why didn’t she take them to Amelia herself?”
“Because she was afraid,” I said, in the undertone of melodrama. “They’re stolen, Daisy.”