“Then give me the couple of hundred lire.”
He put forth his hand.
But Beatrice held back.
“What for?” she asked, suspicion waking.
“Oh, I shall have uses for it.”
His outstretched hand—a slim old tapering, bony hand, in colour like dusky ivory—closed peremptorily, in a dumb-show of receiving; and now, by the bye, you could not have failed to notice the big lucent amethyst, in its setting of elaborately-wrought pale gold, on the third finger.
“Come! Give!” he insisted, imperative.
Rueful but resigned, Beatrice shook her head.
“You have caught me finely,” she sighed, and gave.
“You should n't have jingled your purse—you should n't have flaunted your wealth in my face,” laughed the Cardinal, putting away the notes. He took snuff again. “I think I honestly earned that pinch,” he murmured.