So she called the shopman to her, and asked him in French whether he could not take eight hundred francs for the bracelet.
She accosted him in French, for that is the language of Geneva; and the two ladies had talked very freely to each other in English, supposing that neither the shopkeeper nor the new party of customers would understand what they were saying. But it happened that the shopkeeper himself, as well as Mr. and Mrs. Holiday, understood English very well, and thus he knew the meaning of all that the ladies had been saying; and he was too well acquainted with human nature not to know that the end of such a consultation and deliberation as that would be the purchase of the bracelet, and was therefore not at all disposed to abate the price.
"No, madam," said he, speaking in French, and in a very polite and obliging manner; "I cannot vary from the price I named at all. We are obliged to adopt the system of having only one price here. Besides, that bracelet could not possibly be afforded for less than a thousand francs. Earlier in the season we asked twelve hundred francs for it; and I assure you, madam, that it is a great bargain at a thousand."
After looking at the bracelet a little longer, and holding it up again in different lights, and hearing her friend's solicitations that she would purchase it repeated in various forms, Almira finally concluded to take it.
It may seem, at first view, that Almira's friend evinced a great deal of generosity in urging her thus to buy an ornament more rich and costly than she could hope to purchase for herself; but her secret motive was not a generous one at all. She wished to quote Almira's example to her own husband, as a justification for her having bought a richer piece of jewelry than he would otherwise have approved of.
"Mine only cost eight hundred francs," she was going to say; "and cousin Almira bought one that cost a thousand."
In this way she hoped to exhibit to her husband that which he might otherwise have regarded as foolish extravagance in the light of self-denial and prudent economy.
In the mean time, while Almira and her friend had been making their purchases at the table, another shopman had been displaying a great many trays to Mrs. Holiday on one of the counters. The ornaments contained in these trays were by no means as costly as those which had been shown to the two ladies at the table; for Mrs. Holiday had said to the shopman, as she came in, that she wished to see only some simple pins and other ornaments worth from fifty to one hundred francs. They were, however, just as pretty in Mrs. Holiday's opinion. Indeed, the beauty of such ornaments as these seldom has any relation to the costliness of them. This, however, constitutes no reason, in the opinion of many ladies, why they should buy the less expensive ones; for with these ladies it is the costliness of an ornament, rather than the beauty of it, that constitutes its charm.
The two ladies paid for their purchases with gold coins which they took from elegant gold-mounted porte-monnaies that they carried in their hands, and then, with a dash and a flourish, went away.
Mrs. Holiday took up one after another of the ornaments before her, and looked at them with a musing air and manner, that seemed to denote that her thoughts were not upon them. She was thinking how erroneous an estimate those ladies form of the comparative value of the different sources of happiness within the reach of women who sacrifice the confidence and love of their husbands to the possession of a pearl necklace or a diamond pin.